Fig & Honey Ice Cream

Because I am still finding it hard to adjust to being back at home after my summer holiday, I thought it would be good to try and re-create one of the ice creams I particularly enjoyed this year in France. Each night after dinner we would all stroll down to the ice cream kiosk for our nightly ice cream fix. Fortunately for us the kiosk in question happens to sell some of the best ice cream in south-west France.

O Sorbet d’Amour has such an incredibly long list of flavours that in the two years of visiting it each night and trying different flavours each time, I am nowhere near to sampling even half of the menu. There is as long a list of sorbets as there is ice cream, some of which feature ingredients like “Fleur de Cactus”, “Calisson d’Aix” (candied fruits) or “Reglisse” (liquorice).

Some of the “parfums” I tried this year were “Figue” (fig sorbet), “Creme Brûlée”, ” Confiture du lait” (dulce de leche), “Croostie Cacahuetes” (crunchy nuts) along with many other tastings from the rest of the family. These included blood orange sorbet, raspberry sorbet, mint choc chip ice cream and several other variations on a chocolate theme but the exquisite “Mascarpone figue”  is the one on which I have based my latest flavour.

Fig & honey ice cream

The interesting thing about Sorbet d’Amour  is it’s size. It is tiny, as wide as two ice cream fridges put together but manned by at least three servers during its busy period which happens to be between 10-11pm at night it seems, catering for all members of the family in true French style. We would stand in line waiting excitedly while all the other far fancier ice cream parlours looked bereft of customers.

Even better than that, we could walk back to our flat along the cool sandy beach revelling in our latest flavoured ices whilst passing groups of French teens smoking and drinking in a stylishly civilised manner with the sun was setting around us. That is exactly why it is so hard coming back to reality you see.

I decided to base my ice cream on the fig and mascarpone (Mascarpone figue) flavour selected by Mr.Scott and I used this recipe for inspiration but I increased the amount of honey and lowered the amount of sugar when cooking my fig compote and added a splash of Brandy to lift the flavour. My ice cream base is also indulgently rich, virtually all cream with a splash of milk but this is something you could easily adapt by changing the cream to milk ratio to suit your taste.

More fig recipe inspiration for you:

Fig beetroot & Feta salad – Tinned Tomatoes

Fig Jam – The Garden deli

Cardamom spiced fig & plum galette – Food to Glow

Spiced fig, date, oat & almond milk smoothie – Fuss Free flavours

Gluten Free fig cake – Maison cupcake

Roasted balsamic figs – Cook Sister

Fig & almond tray bake – Feeding boys

Fig & walnut biscotti – Franglais Kitchen

I am entering my ice cream into the following challenge:

Simple and in Season – Franglais Kitchen & Ren Behan

Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream – Kavey Eats

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Fig & Honey Ice Cream

A decadently rich ice cream packed full of flavour.

Course Dessert

Cuisine French

Keyword honey ice cream

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 40 minutes

Total Time 1 hour

Servings 10

Author Laura Scott

Ingredients

• For the ice cream base:)
• 500 ml Double cream
• 100 ml Full fat milk
• 6 Egg yolks
• 100 g Caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
• For the fig compote:)
• 500 g Fresh figs roughly chopped
• 4 tbsp Honey
• 1 tbsp Demerara sugar
• 1/2 tsp Ground cinnamon
• 1 Star anise
• 100 ml Water
• 1 tbsp Brandy/Cognac

Instructions

1. For the ice cream base:)

2. Heat the cream, milk and vanilla in a saucepan over a low to medium heat until the mixture begins to come up to the boil,

3. Before it reaches full boiling point, remove the cream mixture from the heat,

4. While the cream mixture is heating up place the egg yolks and caster sugar into a bowl and whisk them together,

5. Pour a little of the hot cream mix into the egg mix and stir it through before adding in the rest of the warm cream mixture and whisk well to combine,

6. Pour the egg,cream and vanilla custard back into the saucepan and stir continuously over a low heat until the custard thickens which should take between 5 and 8 minutes,

7. Once thickened remove from the heat, pour into a shallow container to chill it down quickly and refrigerate until completely cold (I left mine overnight)

8. For the fig compote:)

9. Place all ingredients apart from the Brandy into a saucepan, bring to the boil and then let the mixture simmer away on a medium heat for about 40 minutes until the fig mixture has reduced and become jam like,

10. Once reduced, take the fig compete off the heat and let it cool a little before you blend it to a smooth paste using a stick blender/food processor then add the Brandy,

11. Place the compote in the fridge to cool down completely (I left mine overnight)

12. For the ice cream:)

13. Freeze the vanilla custard base using an ice cream machine,

14. When it is frozen transfer the ice cream to a large bowl and fold in the fig compote leaving ripples of fig as you would in a raspberry ripple ice cream,

15. Transfer the ice cream to a plastic tub and freeze until set.