No-churn Christmas pudding ice cream

In my opinion, the best thing about Christmas pudding is turning it into ice cream! This is a really easy way to do that without an ice cream machine or the faff of making your own egg custard (although if you want to do that, here's how I used to do it - before discovering this no-churn method!). The whole point is to be able to whip it up in 5 minutes and forget about it until the next day.

Roasted banana ice cream

This is a three ingredient recipe - just coconut milk, honey and bananas, roasted in their skins to bring out their flavour.  It also means it's suitable for vegans as it contains no eggs or milk.  I made it to accompany my roasted banana bread with brown butter frosting and caramelised pistachios.   

Snow ice cream

It's sad to think that all the snow will be gone in a day or two. Desperate to make the most of it before it does, I went searching on the internet for things to do. I've heard of snow dyeing, where you add coloured dyes to buckets of snow on top of fabric, and wondered if there were similar things to do that were edible. Then I found this recipe - instant ice cream made from fresh snow!  So I rushed into the garden with a couple of mixing bowls and scooped up the top layer of snow from the several inches worth covering our garden table.  Just add a little icing sugar, milk and vanilla and hey presto! Magic snow ice cream!

Christmas Pudding Ice Cream

I’ve had this recipe for years now and make it every Christmas.  I’ve no idea where it came from originally as I've just got a scribbled recipe on a piece of paper, but over the years I’ve adapted it, replacing the double cream in the original recipe for brandy flavoured cream of the sort that supermarkets start selling at Christmas time.  It’s so much nicer than plain old Christmas cake, and adds a lovely festive taste to pretty much any cake or dessert that you fancy making at this time of year.