There I was, with five egg yolks left over from last week’s pavlova binge. It’s the way it goes … I had three egg whites left over from other recent baking, which I thought would be perfect for a pav. But then I had to make a second pav when the first was undercooked and my one excess egg yolk expanded to five.

Exploring my possibilities, I found what was obviously the perfect recipe. Perfect, mostly because it used precisely five egg yolks. Maybe I could get to a point where I didn’t have either a white or yolk excess.

And so, vanilla ice cream.

A couple of years ago I swapped a whole heap of fresh figs off our tree for an ice cream maker, after my friend upgraded his machine to something fancier and better. For a while, all I used it for was fig ice cream, which is so miraculously good, and such a pretty colour and texture, I couldn’t imagine anything nicer (I’ll come back to this when the figs are in season).

But vanilla ice cream is still a favourite, and all the stars were in alignment, so it was time.

I used a recipe from taste.com. I substituted fresh vanilla seeds for some of the vanilla essence and adapted it for the ice-cream maker.  (This just involves chilling the egg/sugar/milk/vanilla mix thoroughly and putting it and the cream in the machine for 20-30 minutes).

It’s very rich, but then, is that a bad thing?

corinna hente