What’s cooking today: Cardamom ice cream with a cinnamon tuile

Our recent Curry Night, which I wrote about last week, wrapped up with a cool and smooth dessert of cardamom ice cream with a cinnamon tuile and cubes of spanspek (cantaloupe melon) macerated in hanepoot.

I didn’t want to leave you hanging for too long after reading about it, so here’s the recipe for all that.

A note on why there are so many cardamom pods: we made the ice cream twice. First time round, the cardamom was barely discernible. So we did it again, tipped a load in, and it came out singing of cardamom. That’s why.

The mutton curry recipe will follow tomorrow.

(Makes between 1.5 and 2 litres)

Ingredients

Yolks of 6 large eggs (keep 4 of the whites for the tuiles)

½ cup castor sugar

1 x 400 ml can coconut cream

1 and ¾ cups/ 430 ml cream, not whipped

¼ cup castor sugar

20 cardamom pods

¼ tsp salt

For the tuiles:

100 g cake flour

110 g castor sugar

8 Tbsp melted butter

¼ tsp ground cinnamon

Whites of 4 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla essence

A pinch of salt

Method

Whisk the egg yolks in a metal bowl with ½ cup of castor sugar until creamy and pale yellow. Set aside. 

In a saucepan, heat the dairy cream and coconut cream with a hint of salt and a 1/4 cup caster sugar on a very low heat. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

In a fine stream, pour the milk mixture into the bowl with the creamed egg and sugar mixture, stirring constantly, until all combined. Pour this back into the saucepan along with the cardamom pods and put it on a low heat again, stirring or whisking all the while, until it thickens into a custard resembling a crème Anglaise and coats the back of a dessert spoon. Leave it to steep for 10 to 15 minutes, then remove the cardamom pods. (We used a sieve.)

Pour it into a metal bowl or Tupperware, cool to room temperature, and put it in the freezer. I find that this recipe freezes perfectly, with no need for stirring after every couple of hours. It needs at least five or six hours of freezing time.

Remove it from the freezer about 10 minutes before serving, so that it softens slightly.

For the tuiles:

You need a 180℃ oven for this.

Sift the flour, castor sugar, cinnamon and salt, then whisk in the melted butter, egg whites and vanilla essence until it is a smooth batter. Pass it through a fine sieve. Refrigerate for two hours.

If it is too thick when you’re ready to bake the tuiles, add no more than half a teaspoon of milk at a time, stirring it in, until it is runny again.

Line a baking sheet with baking paper. Drop about 2 tsp of the mixture in only two places on the sheet, about 20 cm apart. Spread them with the back of the spoon until they are thin, almost transparent circles.

Bake for four to five minutes or until the edge browns. Remove quickly and, if shaping, shape them in your chosen way, or leave them flat to use the way we did in the photograph. To make little cup-shaped wafers, for instance, form them around an upturned small ramekin or teacup while still soft. Or roll them around the back end of a wooden spoon for a tubular shape.

To macerate spanspek, cube the flesh and put them in a container with 4 Tbsp hanepoot and 2 Tbsp icing sugar. Stir to coat and leave to macerate for an hour or more. DM

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Writer 2023, jointly with TGIFood columnist Anna Trapido.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed in a bowl by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.