Lucuma Ice Cream

So I bought a packet of Lucuma powder from the health food shop to see what it was and what it tasted like.

Turns out it is dried powdered fruit. Native to the Andes, it has a sort of caramel/vanilla type of flavour.

It also turns out that Lucuma Ice Cream is one of the most popular flavours of ice cream in Peru. I have no idea what the real thing made from fresh fruit is like, but this recipe for a custard-based icecream flavoured with the powder is pretty good!

Cherry Plum Ice Cream

This was thrown together in full-on experimental mode, in an effort to prove that cherry plums are good for more than just jam-making - so no measurements noted, I'm afraid.

* I stewed some cherry plums in the pressure cooker with a piece of cinnamon stick, and then rubbed them through a colander to puree them and remove the stones.

* I sweetened the plum puree until it tasted sweet enough warm.

* I chilled the plum puree thoroughly.

* In a jug I combined 3/4 pint of cold cherry plum puree, a slug of sloe gin, and 1/2 pint of whipping cream, and stirred to combine.

* On tasting, I decided the mixture was not quite sweet enough, so I then added a slug of runny honey and stirred to combine again.

* The resulting salmon-pink mixture went into the icecream maker to churn in the usual way.

Result - a litre tub of Cherry Plum Ice Cream now firming up in the freezer.


The extra leftover plum puree will end up mixed into cold custard to make a Cherry Plum Fool.

Cucumber Lime Cheesecake

The Cucumber Lime Jam with Vanilla that I made a couple of weeks ago tasted like it would go well with cheesecake.

So I adapted a recipe for an uncooked marmalade cheesecake from my copy of the Marks&Spencer Cheesecakes book to incorporate the jam.