Try our Fig Leaf Ice Cream

Have you ever wondered how we create some of our exciting meals and desserts? At our Stables Restaurant, we try to be authentic and use ingredients from the gardens in our dishes, including using fig leaves to make our delicious fig leaf ice cream.

Hestercombe's Patissier, Paul Ruttledge, shares with you his famous fig leaf ice cream recipe to try at home.

Ingredients needed:

• 620g full fat milk
• 600g double cream
• Vanilla
• 10 egg yolks
• 180g caster sugar
• 260g liquid glucose (available from Amazon or local chemist)
• 8 fig leaves (steeped in the dairy whilst heating then removed)
• 5 fig leaves (blended with the sugar)

Method:

• Place milk, cream, 8 fig leaves and vanilla into a saucepan and bring to a simmer (just about to boil).
• Remove from heat and allow to cool whilst preparing the next stage.
• Whisk egg yolks and the fig leaf blended sugar till pale and well mixed. Add a little of the hot mixture to the yolks (about a third) whilst whisking (tempering the egg mixture), then when well incorporated, return yolk mixture to pan of hot milk and stir till incorporated.
• Return pan to medium heat and stir continuously until the mixture reaches 82C (anglaise).
• Remove from heat and pass through a chinois (sieve/passing strainer) into a bowl set over ice stirring occasionally till cooled to around 45C.
• Add the liquid glucose and mix well till all dissolved. Place cling film over the surface of the mix and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, remove the cling film and whisk to incorporate any possible separation of ingredients, then churn in an ice cream machine. If no machine, place into a plastic tub with lid and freeze, stirring or mixing with a fork till frozen. This mix will always be soft scoop because of the liquid glucose.