June is a time when strawberries are filling the shops, overflowing punnets and in my case ripening almost too quickly in the garden. My little friends ( the under 10 year olds) put me straight when we cooked waffles the other day. The best waffle topping they thought was to cover them with strawberries and pour over warm chocolate sauce. I’d just returned from my allotement with a basketfull of ripe fruit, so it was easy to satisfy their after school hunger.
For me a glut of strawberries reminds me of the best strawberry ice-cream ever, which incidently is also the easiest to make and not needing an ice-cream machine. It is not often that you have real pieces of the fruit in strawberry ice-cream. For me real strawberry ice-cream is a reminder of the old fashioned ice-creams we used to eat returning from the beach on a hot Sunday. But you don’t need the beach to enjoy this…just a bit of summer sun.
So Here’s how you make it.
Squash 500g ripe strawberries in a bowl using a potato masher. Stir in 125g iciing sugar and the juice of an orange. Whip 300g double cream to soft peaks, then fold this into the strawberries. Pour into a container and put in the freezer until solid. In the winter you can substitute the strawberries with ripe bananas. It is worth pureeing them I think.