Basic ice cream

I learnt cooking from my mum, nanna and my Greek next door neighbours, but all my basic cooking skills come from mum, how to boil, poach and fry an egg, make toast, make béchamel sauce, cakes of all types, puddings, baked dinners, make a good gravy, the list goes on, all the cuisine in the repertoire of the Australian-English home cook.

I love using mum's recipes, she wasn't a chef or a famous cook, but she was a damed fine cook of Australian-English cooking, reading her recipes brings her into my kitchen, I can see her writing letters to my brother in Perth with the same writing style, her hand writing in her recipes is a reminder of her.

This is the ice cream I grew up on, as a child I wanted shop bought Streets ice cream and was embarrassed by this home made stuff, though I loved eating it, vanilla ice cream with milo sprinkled over it - yum!

Now I make my own ice cream from organic ingredients, and I have never made mum's, so I shall and then post about it.

There are no eggs in this recipe, instead, flour is used as the thickener, very 'make do and mend'.

Custard base
1 quart (old imperial measure) of milk
2 cups sugar
1/3 cup flour

Mix sugar and flour together thoroughly. Scald milk and add to dry mixture. Cook until thickened over a hot element, stirring occasionally. Chill in fridge. This makes 5 cups of custard base.

To make the ice cream
1 cup custard base
1 cup cream (real pouring cream, not thickened with gelatin)
1 and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Whip cream until just stiff, fold in the other ingredients well. Freeze, bring out of freezer and mix again, freeze, do this a few times, the more its done the smoother and less icy the ice cream will be. Use an ice cream churn if you have one.

Mum would add different flavouring: chocolate, fresh fruit, coffee, she would also layer it for 'something fancy' like a birthday and make little treats in an ice block tray.