Lots of the blogs that I read seem to have posts containing recipes for Christmas puddings or other dried fruit based desserts, but not here. The Snail of Happiness does not like Christmas pudding, so I’m going to share with you my idea of a lovely winter treat:

White Chocolate and Raspberry Ice Cream!

I can’t eat ‘normal’ ice cream because of my lactose intolerance (and even lactase tablets don’t help with food that is so cold). So, I make my own lactose-free ice cream… in this case by treating the cream and milk with lactase enzyme (available in a bottle) to digest the lactose overnight beforehand. You need:

150ml cream
400ml whole milk
3 egg yolks
100g sugar
150g white chocolate
as many raspberries as you like (easiest if frozen)

1. Heat the milk and cream in a pan to just below boiling point. Meanwhile combine the egg yolks and sugar in a heatproof bowl.
2. Pour half the hot milk/cream mixture onto the eggy goo and stir well.
3. Return the mixture to the pan containing the rest of the milk/cream and heat gently until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Do not allow this mixture to boil.
4. Remove from the heat and stir in the white chocolate, allowing it to melt completely. Transfer back into the bowl.
5. Cover the bowl and allow the custard mixture to cool (I add a couple of extra drops of lactase at this stage to deal with any lactose in the chocolate) then refrigerate overnight.
6. Either put the cold custard in an ice cream maker until a soft frozen stage is reached (20 minutes in my Kenwood Chef attachment) or freeze the custard for several hours, beating it by hand once every hour to stop large ice crystals forming.
7. When softly frozen, mix in the frozen raspberries and leave, undisturbed, to finish freezing.

In my opinion this is a much better end to a meal than Christmas pudding… plus it uses eggs and raspberries from the garden and makes us dream of summer days!

Lactose-free raspberry and white chocolate ice cream: a taste of summer