Honey and Ginger Biscuit Ice Cream

A community recipe by Bevis

Not tested or verified by Nigella.com

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Introduction

A subtly flavoured ice-cream better than almost anything you can buy in teh shops.

Ingredients

Serves: 6

For the Honey and Ginger Biscuits

3 ounces soft dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons runny honey
3 teaspoons ground ginger (to taste)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (to taste)
3 ounces unsalted butter
½ teaspoon baking soda
8 ounces flour

For the for the Ice Cream

17½ fluid ounces whole milk
6 medium egg yolks
3 ounces soft light brown sugar
3 ounces superfine sugar
5¼ fluid ounces heavy cream
3 teaspoons ground ginger (to taste)
2 tablespoons runny honey

For the for the Cups of Tea

ginger biscuits
17½ fluid ounces tea

Method

Honey and Ginger Biscuit Ice Cream is a community recipe submitted by Bevis and has not been tested by Nigella.com so we are not able to answer questions regarding this recipe.

First make the honey and ginger biscuits

Heat the sugar, honey, ginger, cinnamon and a tablespoon or so of water until everything has melted together and is just on the verge of boiling.

Take off the heat and stir in the butter in little lumps until it has all melted in. Stir in the bicarb.

Finally sift in the flour and mix until you have a stiffish dough. It will be slightly oily because of warming the ingredients but you may need a bit more flour to get it to a manageable consistency. Don't add too much though otherwise it will become too tough and be almost impossible to roll out.

Wrap the dough in clingfilm and put in the fridge for a couple of hours, or over-night. When you're ready to use the dough take it out of the fridge and roll it to a medium thickness (5mm or so).

Cut it into the desired shape and bake in an oven pre-heated to 180 degrees c for about 10 to 15 minutes. The biscuits should be slightly soft when you take them out but still cooked enough for you to be able to take them off the baking tray and onto a cooling rack. They harden up quite a lot as they cool down.

Makes about twenty or so, depending on what size cutter you use. Now have a nice sit down with a cup of tea and a couple of the biscuits, which are just different enough from regular ginger biscuits because of the taste of honey to be extra good.

Once you've done that you can get on with making the ice-cream

In a large pan heat the milk until almost boiling. In a separate bowl beat the sugars and the egg yolks until they are smooth.

Pour in the hot milk, stirring all the time. Clean out the milk pan and pour in the custard mix and heat (continually stirring) until you have a smooth custard. If it looks like splitting, quickly transfer the pan to a sink full of cold water and whisk it vigorously until it is smooth again. Put the custard to one side (or in the fridge) and let it cool down completely.

Whisk the cream until it is thick and stir it into the cold custard. Stir in the honey and the ground ginger and then freeze. Remember if tasting the ice-cream for the honey and ginger that on freezing the flavours will become slightly less powerful (especially the sweetness of the honey) but don't add too much because you don't want the flavours to be over-powering. If you're using an ice-cream maker just let it do it's thing and have another cup of tea and a biscuit. If you are freezing it in the freezer decant the custard mix into a suitable container and just remember to take it out of the freezer and beat it to get rid of ice crystals every half hour or so (depending on how quickly it's freezing).

Just before the ice-cream has totally frozen (or if using an ice-cream maker once the ice-cream is ready to be transferred to the freezer but is still fairly soft) crumble in as many or as few of the ginger biscuits as you like. Five or six should be plenty, but you may want fewer or more. You want some smallish crumbs but quite a few larger pieces as well. Don't worry if the biscuits seem quite hard, they soften up when in the ice-cream. Stir in the biscuits pieces and add more if you think it needs it.

Finally (and for that little touch that makes you look like you've really thought about the presentation) crumble a couple of biscuits over the top of the ice-cream to create a sort of crust or topping. These bits will stay much more crunchy than the biscuit actually in the ice-cream. Then put it all in the freezer to complete freezing.

When ready to serve remember to remove from the freezer for half an hour or so for the ice-cream to soften up a little. What you are left with is a relatively simple ice-cream that has a subtle but obvious honey taste (depending on how much you add of course) that also has an edge from the ginger and a bit of bite from the biscuits. Plus you end up with a batch of ginger biscuits which you can serve with the ice-cream (assuming you haven't eaten them all with your cups of tea of course).