I don’t encourage food snobbery but there are some things that I just cannot abide by and one of them is fake fruit flavour. When I was young, we’d get a tub of Neapolitan ice cream (and it was always Neopolitan, certainly none of this gorgeous gourmet ice cream you see these days) and despite my natural graviation towards anything pink, I’d always give the faux strawberry ice cream a definite miss. It seemed just not quite right to me and not strawberry like enough. Although I should just target faux strawberry – I’ve found the worst offenders for the faux fruit flavour banana and cherry which taste nothing like the actual food.

Rant over I’ll get off my (pink) soapbox and explain how overjoyed I am that Summer fruits are coming back into season. This last weekend I filled my fruit bowl with Pomegranates, Mangoes, Strawberries, Nashis and Papaya. So I wanted to do something with some of this fruit but also combining it with mascarpone which I had made just before. The heat this week also convinced me that it needed to be an ice cream of some sort too.

If you had a quick glance at the ingredients list you’ll see that I have balsamic vinegar and black pepper. Honestly, I haven’t taken leave of my senses, they’re both fantastic accompaniments to strawberries but of course you could leave these out or try one at a time but to me it just enhances the taste. I bought these mini cones a while back and miraculously they survived the move and I placed them in these adorable pastel mini tin pails I found at Pink Frosting, where I have been given the rather lovely title of “expert” and I pick my favourite products from their range once every 2 months!

The ice cream is smooth and cheesecake like because of the mascarpone. In fact with some of the cones, I crushed some biscuits and rolled the tops of them in them and then froze them for a later party which I think qualifies them as strawberry mascarpone cheesecake ice creams. The biscuit crumbs allowed them not to stick together – a practical measure you see and you had better believe that I pretended that they were supposed to be like that all along!

So tell me Dear Reader, what is your favourite Summer fruit and how do you like to eat it? On it’s own, in a salad or in an ice cream or sorbet? If you missed out on listening to my interview on the ABC702 Food at Eleven program with Simon Marnie, here is a link! I’m there with Demis and Helen discussing our favourite events from the Sydney International Food Festival. Time really flies when you’re having fun and before I knew it, the interview had finished (although will I ever get used to the sound of my own voice? ).

And because it’s Wallpaper Wednesday, here is a Wallpaper to help you get through Hump Day! Chee Chong Fun Rice Noodles.

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This month’s Daring Bakers challenge was exciting. For not only was it chocolate based, it only had 3 ingredients. Yes seriously. Of course I’m not counting the ice cream part. They wouldn’t let us get away with something so simple. But even give this head start of sorts, I still waited til the last week to do this. I’m not usually a procrastinator, indeed I prefer to get things done earlier than waiting and dreading for something. Call me a Peeling-Off-The-Bandaid-Quickly kind of person. I was the one that handed in University papers early (although conversely I sometimes show up 5-10 minutes late to things). It’s probably because I like planning, in fact my husband told me that I was recently talking in my sleep where I impatiently issued him instructions on how to organise and move plants. Yes that’s what my dreams are made of. Hardly hot stuff wouldn’t you say?

But I digress, the cake itself is incredibly moist – most flourless cakes are, but this one contains no almond meal as well as no flour. So the look suffers a little in that is sinks and forms a crater. And for someone that loves the look of a cake as much as the taste, this dismayed me a little. I paced around the house clucking like an anxious Type A personality chicken. What do I do? The plans I had to decorate it were awry. It was too sunken. Then I flicked through Gordon Ramsay’s 3 Star Chef cookbook and combined two decorative touches I saw on the pages. **Sigh** “No Chicken Little,” I said to myself, “The Sky is not falling”.

I’d like to tell you that I reduced some plum juice to a syrup but I took the lazy option and used jam mixed with water to create the pools which gave me a good flavour, without little effort. The biscuits on top I bought from Aldi, which I buy every year for Valentines Day. I did mention that we had to make an ice cream to go along with it, and I had originally intended for an Apricot sorbet (it would have matched the decorations I had in mine before I realised that it was a sunken cake) but instead I used a Cafe Au Lait Ice Cream I had made previously. And whilst it didn’t turn out as I’d originally hoped, the proof as they say is in the tasting. It is a wonderfully gooey cake, like a gorgeous soft nut free brownie.

As for my plans, we’re off to New Zealand’s South Island for our 3rd Wedding Anniversary. I shall of course have internet access and I look forward to reporting back on all that is wonderful, good and foody in the Land of the Long White Cloud.

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

To see other Daring Baker’s creations, click here

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I must apologise for the incessant rambling on about this but there are only a few days to go for voting. Not Quite Nigella has been nominated in two categories for Well Fed Network’s awards! Thankyou so much for the wonderful people that nominated me And if you would like to vote you can do so on:

Best Food Blog – Post (for my Freeganism story)

Best Food Blog – City

Lots of love and happiness,

Lorraine aka NQN

xxx

And now onto the story..

I don’t claim that Jackson Pollock had anything to do with the recipe for this ice cream. The title has more to do with my husband’s first reaction to seeing the ice cream in its about to be frozen state. I don’t even know if Jackson Pollock ate ice cream-do brilliant artists even eat normal food? I always picture them subsisting on cigarettes, tortured stares and “inspiration”.

I’ve spoken before about my love for Twister ice creams. Twister was a Vanilla ice cream cone with a swirl of strawberry and passionfruit syrup through it.  I say “was” as I don’t think they even make it anymore which makes me crave it that much more. January is the hottest month here in Sydney and the best, tastiest way to cool off is with ice cream and a home made one is always preferable to me. After making some Pomegranate syrup and finding it absolutely heavenly, I thought I’d give ice cream a bit of a stab. I’m on a bit of a health kick at the moment (although I must admit that the Krispy Kreme “Christmas Pudding” donut I had earlier was a bit of an aberration as far as that endeavour was concerned), so I wanted to make a low fat vanilla ice cream so that you could feel like you’re not contributing to the Christmas poundage whilst trying to stay sane in the heat.

The resulting ice cream is luscious. The Pomegranate syrup is divine and the combination with the vanilla reminds me so much of the Twister ice cream. If anything I might add some sweetened passionfruit puree to truly recreate it. That is, if there’s any left after my husband scoops himself as much as his hungry heart desires.

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