“No one says Doris Day is their favourite star, in the way no one says vanilla is their favourite ice cream flavour. Yet a heck of a lot of vanilla ice cream gets sold.”

Peter Bradshaw, Doris Day’s obituary in The Guardian

Of course you can always simply buy vanilla ice cream, although take care, there is a wide range of quality – go here to find out which is best and which to avoid. Probably the best thunder and lightening ice cream is produced by Maud’s which has outlets in Northern Ireland, Newcastle and Windsor – their trademark flavour is Pooh Bear’s Delight.

However, it is VERY simple to make your own and you do not need fancy ice cream makers or to constantly rake it over.  This ice cream is particularly good because it never gets really hard and once out of the freezer it softens up beautifully.

Listen to the song from Frozen (at the bottom of the post) to get you into the mood, as you mix this up.

Recipe for velvet vanilla ice cream

makes over a litre – enough for about 8

Ingredients

• 600 ml/2½ cups double cream
• 400g/14 oz tin condensed milk
• 2 tsp Madagascan vanilla paste
• pinch of salt

Method

1. Whisk (using an electric whisk) all together in a large bowl until you reach the soft-peaks stage (about five minutes).
2. Pour into a plastic Tupperware box.
3. Put in the freezer for twelve ( minimum five) hours or so.
4. Take out about 15 minutes before you’re due to serve it.

There is a host of things you can either add to vanilla ice cream; or serve with it.

Things you can add and mix in to vanilla ice cream:

• to make thunder and lightning ice cream simply add honeycomb – to find out how to make honeycomb go here – or simply add a crushed Crunchie bar
• chopped prunes or dates soaked in brandy – drain, mix the dates or prunes in with the ice cream, serve the reserved liquor warm with the ice cream
• crystallised ginger
• rum soaked raisins – as with the prunes or dates serve the warmed reserved liquor with the ice cream. If you don’t want to use alcohol soak the raisins in tea instead
• chopped After Eight mints
• chips of Amadei Porcelana chocolate (possibly the best chocolate in the world)…. or any chocolate you really like
• Amarena Fabbri sour cherries – as with the prunes serve the liquor they come in separately
• lemon or lime zest – the lime zest goes especially well with chips of Montezuma Sea Dog chocolate
• crumbled chocolate chip cookies
• chopped pistachios, honey (Sardinian bitter honey, or chestnut honey, if you can get it)
• crumbled shortbread
• Nutella. If you make this, sandwich it between slices of French Toast as they do at Spuntino.
• fruit curd
• jam
• salted caramel
• a fruit coulis (or plain, sieved raspberries). Marble through the ice cream with a knife

Things you can serve with vanilla ice cream:

• if you like licorice, Don PX Toro de Albalá Reserva 1983
• if you like molasses, treacle and plump sultanas try Gonzalez Byass Delicado PX Sherry NV – only for ice cream, not for drinking
• salted caramel sauce, or Pedro Ximenez toffee sauce, or butterscotch sauce
• warmed rhubarb compôte
• hot plums poached with crème de cassis or just straight British cassis (which is less sweet and syrupy and very fruity)
• quince stewed in syrup and/or quince cordial
• warm be-berried brownies
• hot chocolate cake
• raspberry vinegar, or balsamic vinegar
• spiced apple with calvados (especially good if you’ve added honeycomb to the ice cream
• warm apple and treacle tart
• rhubarb crumble, or blackberry caramel crumble
• lemon shortbread
• a hot blackcurrrant sauce or a hot fruit compôte

Music to cook to

Below, Doris Day, the Hollywood equivalent of vanilla ice cream, sings A Sentimental Journey.

And we have Let It Go, from Frozen.

And here’s Wonder Woman trying ice cream for the first time.