Can I Cheat To Make Vin Santo Ice Cream?

Our answer

Nigella's Vin Santo Ice Cream With Cantuccini is a made from scratch ice cream that is flavoured with the Italian dessert wine vin santo and served with cantuccini biscuits. The ice cream is also made with brown sugar as the caramel notes of the sugar complement the flavour of the vin santo.

Unfortunately we would not recommend mixing vin santo with softened vanilla ice cream and then re-freezing it as we suspect that the resulting ice cream would be too soft. Alcohol freezes at an extremely low temperature and for Nigella's ice cream this is an asset as it helps to give the ice cream a smooth texture. But if you add it to commercial ice cream, which has different ratios of sugar and fat, then it will affect how the ice cream re-freezes. You also need to be very careful if mixing items into softened ice cream as if the ice cream softens too much and is re-frozen then this can affect the texture. If you are too busy to make the ice cream then instead we would suggest serving the ice cream "affogato" style, with a shot of vin santo poured over a scoop of ice cream and served with the cantuccini biscuits.