Nectarine and elderflower ice cream

Prep time: 20 minutes, plus cooling time and overnight freezing

Cook time: 25 minutes

Serves 6-8

I seem to have become a specialist in nectarine ice cream. Over the past few years, I’ve made nectarine ice creams with rhubarb, passion fruit and muscat dessert wine. White nectarines have a floral flavour so it seemed obvious to put them together with elderflower.

You don’t need to have an ice-cream machine to make this. Instead of a custard base, it is made with a meringue (it’s very exciting pouring the sugar syrup while whisking the egg whites – it’s obviously easier to do this with a stand mixer, though I have done it with hand-held). You can use this to make peach, apricot, damson or plum ice cream too. You don’t need to remove the skins from the nectarines.

INGREDIENTS

– 500g nectarines (white if possible), destoned (keep the stones) and flesh chopped

– 340g caster sugar

– 3-6 tbsp elderflower cordial

– finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon

– 2 large egg whites

– 290ml double cream

METHOD

Put the fruit flesh, 100g of the sugar, 3 tbsp of the cordial and the nectarine stones into a saucepan. Cook over a gentle heat until the fruit is completely soft. It will take about 15 minutes. Add the lemon zest and juice.

Leave to cool then remove the stones and whizz the flesh and juice in a blender.

Put the rest of the sugar in a saucepan with 150ml water. Heat gently until the sugar has dissolved, then turn the heat up and boil for 5 minutes.

Beat the egg whites until they’re stiff and, while still beating, pour the boiling syrup on to the egg whites. The mixture will go a bit liquid, but keep beating until everything comes together. Add the fruit purée to the whites.

Whip the cream until it’s in soft folds (it’s important not to overbeat it) and add it to the egg-white and fruit mixture. Taste. Add more elderflower if you think it needs it, but limit it to 6 tbsp in total, otherwise the ice cream will have too high a sugar content and won’t freeze well.

Pour the mixture into a container, cover and freeze overnight. This sets very hard, so take it out of the freezer a while before you intend to serve it (it needs at least 15 minutes to soften).