Tart London: How to make hibiscus ice cream

Jemima Jones and Lucy Carr-Ellison discover the floral flavours of East Africa with a hibiscus ice cream
Lucy Carr-Ellison8 November 2018

We recently hosted a Save the Children fundraising dinner at our restaurant in Eccleston Place, and we must admit we felt a little daunted by the catering brief.

The culinary theme for the event was Uganda, so we spent a lot of time researching and really immersing ourselves in the food culture of the East African country. We found that its wonderful diversity of spices and cooking methods is due to influences such as the ancient migration of the Bantu and Nilotic Africans and the arrival of Indians to work on Uganda’s railway network. Particular ingredients and dishes caught our attention and soon we were working out ways to put our own twist on them.

The staple fruit, a type of plantain, for example, goes brilliantly in a spiced chutney served with crispy coconut bhajis. But the biggest revelation was cooking with hibiscus for the first time. The dried flowers are easily available online and they are lovely when blitzed up with other spices and sumac as a marinade or in a salad dressing.

They bring an amazing flavour and beautiful colour: in this case, turning ice cream the prettiest pink, with a floral, citrusy taste that works wonderfully when infused into a vanilla custard base.

Hibiscus ice cream (Serves 8)

Ingredients

300ml cream

300ml whole milk

1 vanilla pod, scraped

4 tbsp dried hibiscus

6 egg yolks

100g sugar

1 tbsp clover honey

Zest of 1 lemon

Juice of ½ lemon

A few drops of rose water (optional)

Method

Heat the cream and milk in a large saucepan over a medium heat with the vanilla pod and hibiscus. Bring to the boil then lower to a simmer for 5 minutes to infuse, stirring constantly. Take off the heat and leave to cool. In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar and honey until pale and creamy.

Slowly pour in the milk mixture, whisking all the while, then add the lemon zest and juice with a few drops of rose water, if you’re using. Then pour it all back into the saucepan and cook slowly over a low heat until it starts to thicken — the texture should be like thick custard on the back of a wooden spoon. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Pass through a sieve, pressing down hard with the back of a spoon to get as much intense pink colour as possible. 

Pour into an ice-cream maker and follow instructions. This would be lovely served with chopped toasted pistachios on top.

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