Iced strawberry and rose fool

Serves 4-6 Desserts and puddings

Advertisement

Method

An old-fashioned fool is stewed fruit folded into custard. This iced version I find best served as soon as it has been frozen for a few hours, just to get the strawberry syrup lightly set.

First make the strawberry sauce. Put the sugar and water in a small pan, and dissolve the sugar over a low heat. Add the strawberries and bring to a boil for about 12 minutes until the mixture looks jam-like. Transfer to a bowl and place in a larger basin of cold water to cool it down quickly. Chill until cold, in the meantime preparing the other stages.

Put the milk in a saucepan and heat gently until bubbles just begin to show around the edge of the pan. Whisk the eggs, sugar and rose water together in a bowl, pour in the hot milk and stir well. Clean out the pan (or the milk residue will burn on to the sides) and pour in the milk mixture.

Cook over a low heat stirring with a wooden spoon for around 8 minutes, without boiling or it will curdle. The custard does not get very thick but you will notice a difference when it is ready as it lightly coats the spoon. Transfer the mixture to a wide bowl and place in a larger basin of cold water to cool it down quickly. The custard will thicken as it cools.

Hull the strawberries and roughly chop straight into a blender, add the rosewater and sugar, and process to a purée. Pour into a sieve set over a bowl and push the purée through with the back of a ladle using a circular motion. Discard the seeds from the sieve. Whisk the cream until just floppy then fold into the cold custard to get an even colour.

Separate the custard about equally into 2 freezer-proof containers. Add all the strawberry purée to one of the containers and stir well. Freeze both for about 1 hour until ice crystals form then mix the outer edges into the centre. Repeat twice more then when quite firm break up the 2 batches separately in a processor until soft and snowy. Or churn the 2 batches separately using an ice cream machine freezing right away until the second batch is churned. To assemble the fool, strain the jam-like strawberry mixture through a sieve set over a bowl. Add the strawberry ice cream to the plain custard mixture and swirl together gently along with the strawberries and some of the syrup. Cover and freeze for about 2 hours. If it is frozen for longer and has hardened too much to scoop, remove lid and put in the fridge for about 20 minutes to soften a little.