Treasure hunt ice-cream

Hands up those who’s offspring received a lot of chocolate from Santa? Hands up who’s still ploughing through it? Hands up who likes ice cream? Three raised hands and this recipe is for you.

This is easy, easy, easy. And perfect for making with kiddies. Charlie liked watching me bury the treasure and even instructed me which goodies to drop next.

Ingredients:

• 400ml double cream, whipped until the consistency of yoghurt
• 3 egg yolks lightly beaten
• 100g demerara sugar but really, anything will do
• left over Christmas chocolate, as much as you like, wrappers removed (Strictly, in order to call your creation treasure hunt ice-cream you must include chocolate coins. If you’re all out due to greed/a large quota of toddlers under your roof, then get thee to a Tesco asap where they’re selling bags off for 39p. Buy lots. You can never have too many chocolate coins.)

Make sure your ice cream machine is ready. So the frozen bits are frozen and the inside is scrupulously clean. If it isn’t then you’re in trouble as this contains raw eggs.

Put the sugar in a saucepan and add 1 tbsp cold water and heat until you have a caramel coloured syrup – be careful not to let it burn but you do need to be relatively fearless. Once it looks suitably autumnal in colour – a kind of deep red, add 3 tbsp boiling water and then cover the pan and leave on a medium heat for about 15 mins.

Take off the heat and pour, a dribble at a time, into the lightly whisked egg yolks. Whisk as you go. Then, keep on whisking until it’s all light and frothy and pop into the freezer for 30 mins. Leave the whisk in the bowl and give it a good stir every 10 or so minutes. It may have separated in the cold so this helps with that little issue.

After the half hour of freezing the caramel and egg yolks is up, fold in the whipped cream. Mix with a metal spoon carefully and then pour into your ice cream machine. Mine takes 45 mins to run which is just enough time to have a heated discussion with a 2 year old about which chocolate to sacrifice to the ice-cream and which to keep in the sweetie tin. And which not to feed 12 week old baby Max.

Once the ice-cream is ready take a very clean plastic container (with lid of course) and put about 1.5cm of the ice cream in the bottom. Then add some buried treasure. Then add more ice-cream, then more treasure. And so on and so worth. Try to save some coins for the top to leave sticking out at jaunty angles. It looks cool and pleases small people too.

Put the treasure in the freezer for another few hours to set harder and then enjoy the treasure hunt!

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