We've been enjoying all the autumnal goodies from our garden recently & now have a good stash of homegrown raspberries, rhubarb & apples in the freezer ready to enjoy over the coming months. The hedgerows have offered an abundance of goodies too, & we've collected several containers of wild blackberries gathered from local hedgerows. Of course some didn't even make it to the container, there had to be some taste testing first!
With the blackberries that did make it home, we thought we'd turn them into a seasonal ice cream. Not only does this organic ice cream taste delicious & cost very little to make, the colour of it is amazing & you only need 4 ingredients to make it!
To make Hedgerow Ice Cream you'll need:
1 ½ cup of blackberries
1 organic lemon
300ml extra thick double cream
1 cup (200g) caster sugar
We recently bought this ice cream maker which we used for this recipe. It's so simple to use & the ice cream is ready within a couple of hours, or less time if you prefer a softer consistency.
Start by pureeing the fruit with the sugar in a juicer or blender. To remove the tiny blackberry seeds strain the pureed fruit through a sieve.
Pour the sieved berry juice into a clean container/blender & add the cream & the juice of 1 lemon. Mix until the ingredients are completely blended. It's useful at this stage to taste the mixture to see if it's too sweet/sharp for you. If it's too sharp add a little sugar, if it's too sweet add a few more berries & blend again.
Pour the berry mixture into your ice cream maker & leave for 30mins (or the time stated on the manufacturers guidelines).
Add the ice cream to a clean plastic container (suitable for freezing) & pop into the freezer, & it's ready to serve in a couple of hours, or when desired.
We saved a few blackberries to decorate our ice cream which was also a neat reminder of the fruit we started out with.
Minnie was so pleased to have made this herself & loved collecting all the berries, creating the mixture (with a little adult supervision), & of course sampling the finished product!
A seasonal organic treat, & a prefect accompaniment to poached apples or apple crumble. Yum!
(When collecting berries always supervise children to check which berries they're picking, & only pick berries which are above dog height!)