Easy no-churn ice cream

Making ice cream seems like a massive faff involving expensive equipment or constant going back and forth from the freezer to stir the damn thing over several hours. But this ice cream is quick, easy and does not mean you are tethered to the kitchen when you have other things to do.

It is basically double cream and condensed milk. That’s it. And then you can customise the ice cream however you like before you pop it in the freezer and get on with your day. For my Very Geordie Christmas, I made two ice creams to go with the berries-and-cherries pudding – one for the kids (see the picture) and one for the adults.

For the kids’ ice cream, I added a tablespoon of vanilla extract and Smarties. To ensure a good distribution of Smarties throughout the ice cream, I spread a small handful on the bottom of the container and then spooned in dollops of the vanilla ice cream, then a few more Smarties, then some more ice cream dollops, before decorating the top with whatever Smarties are left. Because the ice cream mixture is so thick, it is easy to layer the Smarties and the ice cream so it won’t all sink to the bottom.

As well as using Smarties, this ice cream can be easily customised with chocolate chips, bits of honeycomb, blobs of cookie dough, broken-up biscuits, nuts, coloured sprinkles, literally any sweets from the supermarket confectionary section… There really aren’t any limits – if it tastes good with ice cream, you can probably throw it in.

For the adults’ ice cream, I added a tablespoon of vanilla extract, a tablespoon of Sicilian lemon essence and a dash of brandy.

I could have easily made twice as much ice cream and it would have been devoured on Christmas Day, so I’ve set the quantities accordingly in this very simple recipe.