Rishab, my son, loves sweets and chocolates. His clear answer this year for the type of cake he wanted for his birthday party was a chocolate cake . But a few weeks back we got to know, or realise, that he might be lactose intolerant. Some checkups still need to be done, but, as advised by his gastroenterologist, we are giving him a lactose free diet. That means I have to exclude anything which contains any type of milk or milk products, unless it has been made lactose free (through lactase enzyme).
That also means no icecreams for him. I found one packet of lactose free icecream, but after tasting its artificial flavours, I was quite apprehensive of buying them again. Of course, my son didn't mind it. Anything sweet is always good!
Well, after seeing so many icecream recipes at different blogs I felt I should also make some on my own, as I found lactose free creams as well in the market. Now, all I needed was a good recipe which can be made easily, without requiring any icecream maker, and I found a delicious recipe at Meeta's "What's For Lunch, Honey?"
On asking him, if he wanted a chocolate icecream, he immediately said "yes!". Not surprisingly, as he is not allowed to eat chocolates right now as most of them contain milk or milk products and I haven't tried dark chocolates, but for the longer run, I'll have to figure out something.
Though, now I felt that he deserved a chocolate icecream as he has been so cooperative, never complaining about all the changes that I have made in his diet plan, worst of all at the kindergarten.
So, this was my first trial at making icecream, for which I took this simple but tempting recipe of a "Dark Chocolate Icecream" at Meeta's What's For Lunch, Honey?
I have modified it sligthly to make it lactose free and used strawberries instead of raspberries.
Ingredients:
250 ml soya cream (17% fat)
120 ml lactose free heavy cream
5 tablespoons (40 g) unsweetened cocoa powder
140g ( about 2/3 cup) fine sugar
250g (2 cups) strawberries
Method:
- Whisk together all the ingredients,except for the strawberries, in a saucepan.
- Puree the strawberries and pass through a fine sieve.
- Bring the cocoa-cream mixture to a rolling boil while frequently whisking in between.
- Remove from heat, add the puried strawberries and mix. Cover the saucepan for approx. 10 minutes.
- With an ice-cream maker (detailed instructions given at WFLH):
- Place the mixture in the fridge an chill completely for 24 hours.
- Allow the mixture to churn and freeze until smooth and creamy, as per the instructions of the manufacturer.
- Without an ice-cream maker (that is how I did it):
- Pour the ice-cream mixture into a flat steel box with a lid. Once the mixture has cooled down, put it at -15 °C in the freezer for about an hour.
- Take out and whisk everything shortly and thoroughly with a hand blender.
- Put it back in the freezer and repeat the process after every hour, until it begins to thicken on the edges of the tin. Decrease the time to 45 minutes if required.
- Once it is smooth, creamy and frozen it is ready to be served.
Rishab enjoyed the icecream fully. He got two small scoops of the icecream and finished every bit of it and wanted more strawberries for it, which I gave him a bit surprised though, that he actually wanted to eat the icecream along with the fruits.
Me and hubby ate some as well and found it quite delicious. It had a rich chocolately flavour and this slightly tangy flavour of the fruits, as described by Meeta in the recipe. Strawberries also have this fruity sourness along with being sweet, just like raspeberries, which also makes them so delicious.
I must also mention that I could not continue to blend the icecream every 45 minutes till the end after it had begun to harden on the edges, as it was already time to go to bed, but it tuned out soft enough, I felt, that was quite good for the fact that I didn't have an icecream maker.
This is going to be my last minute entry to "Fruit Fair", this months MBP, being hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen.
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