It's that time of the year, when the birds start to chirp in the early hours of the morning, the sun rises before 5 am and the weather is superbly pleasant. We all crave delicious ice cream, so we thought it'd be great to share our favourite ice cream with you.

Decadently delicious, light and beautiful chocolate ice cream. Perfect on its own or why not spruce it up by adding chilli, rosemary or a hazelnut crunch to it.

Ingredients:

  • 500ml double cream
  • 250ml full-fat milk
  • 75g granulated sugar
  • 3 large egg yolks (45ml)
  • 50g cocoa powder
  • Pinch of salt
  • 100g plain chocolate - grated (60% cocoa solids)

Method:

  1. Pour the cream and milk into a saucepan, bring slowly to the boil, remove from the heat and allow to cool for approximately 5 minutes.
  2. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks and salt until all is combined. Slowly pour the slightly cooled milk, cream mixture on to the egg mixture, stirring constantly. Do not use boiling milk as this can turn your egg mixture into scrambled eggs.
  3. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and slowly heat, stirring with a wooden spoon all the time, until it has reached 85°C but doesn't boil. Stir at this temperature for 4 minutes or so.
  4. Add the chocolate and cocoa powder to the hot mix and whisk in. Cool the mixture over an ice-bath, then place into an ice-cream maker and churn. Scoop the churned ice cream into a container and keep in the freezer until ready to serve.

For the chilli chocolate ice cream:

Make the chocolate ice cream as above then, after the chocolate and cocoa powder have been whisked into the hot mixture, add 1/2 tsp of chilli sauce. You don't need very much: the idea is to taste the chocolate first then get a hit of the chilli 10 seconds or so after.

For the rosemary chocolate ice cream:

Use 20g of fresh rosemary leaves, stripped off the stems, then added to the hot mixture and leave to infuse overnight in the refrigerator. Strain and churn.

For the hazelnut crunch ice cream:

Once the chocolate and cocoa powder have been thoroughly mixed in, whisk in 100g of hazelnut paste slowly until fully incorporated.