michelle picker cooks

The inspiration for this ice cream flavour comes from a favourite bonbon of mine – white liquorice surrounded by tart blackcurrant. Happily, I managed to create a very similar flavour, despite flavouring the ice cream with anise instead of liquorice and using a blackberry swirl instead of blackcurrant.

For the ice cream measure 2 cups of milk. Remove 2 tablespoons of the milk and make a slurry with 2 tablespoons of cornflour (cornstarch). Heat the remainder in a saucepan with 1¼ cups of heavy cream, ⅔ of a cup of sugar, 2 tablespoons of glucose and 1 tablespoon of anise seeds. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer for 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and pour in the cornflour slurry. Stir, return to the heat and allow to thicken. In another bowl whisk 3 tablespoons of softened cream cheese with ⅛ of a teaspoon of salt. Pour in the hot milk mixture and whisk until smooth. Cool the mixture down by placing the bowl in an ice bath. When the mixture is cold, strain to remove the seeds and churn in an ice cream machine, sorbetière or even over ice and salt.

To make the blackberry swirl empty a can of blackberries in syrup into a saucepan and cook until the liquid is almost all gone, or if you have fresh blackberries cook them in a saucepan with some sugar to taste – they should still be tart. When they are soft, pass them through a fine sieve (discarding the seeds) and set aside. When the ice cream is churned, remove it to the container in which you will freeze it. Pour the cooled blackberry sauce over the top and, with a chopstick or skewer, swirl it through the ice cream.