I just bought an ice cream machine. Not an expensive one; in fact it was really pretty reasonable – like the cost of 4 or 5 Jägerbombs, or something [note to self: it's never a good thing to rationalise spending by reference to booze]. Thanks to Josh from the excellent blog cookingthebooks for pointing me in the right direction.

Turns out all you need to do is freeze the bowl of the ice cream maker, make a custard and then churn for about 30 minutes or so.

I have grand plans for trying weird and wonderful flavours over the summer. But I thought for my first attempt at making ice cream that there was no need to try anything other than a classic vanilla flavour.

Then I got restless and bought some raspberries to make a ripple.

Worked a treat.

[My recipe is below the unnecessarily large number of pictures.  Click on any picture to make it bigger and see a slide show.]

Raspberry ripple ice cream

(Makes about a litre)

Grab 2 heavy bottomed saucepans. Put the milk and cream in the smaller one of them, split the vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds with a pairing knife. Add both the pod and the seeds to the milk/cream and gradually bring to the boil. Take off the heat and let the vanilla infuse for 30 mins.

In the other saucepan, whisk the egg yolks and sugar until light. Take the vanilla pod out of the milk/cream, gently reheat the milk and cream for a few minutes (so it’s not quite simmering) and gradually pour the warm mix over the yolks, whisking all the time. Make sure you get the majority of the seeds in your custard. Put that saucepan on a low heat, stirring until the custard thickens and covers the back of a wooden spoon. Pour into a bowl or jug, cover with cling film and leave to cool. When cool plop into your ice cream maker, and then follow the instructions for turning custard into ice cream.

Whilst the custard/ice cream is a churnin’, make a raspberry coulis by heating the berries, sugar and water for a couple of minutes (so the juices release). Pass this through a sieve, pushing the fruit through with the back of a spoon. Boil the bright red liquid for a couple of minutes to thicken it a bit and then put in a bowl or jug and place in your freezer for the last minutes of the ice cream churning.

When your ice cream is ready (it’ll be a Mr Whippy texture), spoon it into a tub, dropping the coulis over the ice cream ever so often.  Basically make 3 layers of ice cream with coulis interspersed between them; this will create little pockets of flavour. Make sure there’s some coulis for the top too. At the end, stick a chopstick in and draw it through the ice cream one or two times. Freeze (having removed the chopstick) for at least an hour, or until when you want it. Will keep for a couple of weeks (why wait, though?).