Nectarine and elderflower ice cream recipe

It seems to me that I have become an expert in nectarine ice cream. In recent years I have made nectarine ice cream with rhubarb, passion fruit and muscat dessert wine. White nectarines have a floral flavor so it seemed obvious to combine them with elderflower.

You don’t need to have an ice cream maker to make this. Instead of a custard base, it’s made with a meringue (it’s very exciting to pour in the sugar syrup while whipping the egg whites – it’s obviously easier to do this with a mixer on base, although I made it with a hand mixer). You can also use it to make peach, apricot, plum or plum ice cream. You don’t need to remove the skin from the nectarines.

Schedules

Prep time: 20 minutes, plus chilling time and freezing overnight

Cooking time: 25 minutes

Serves

6-8

Ingredients

• 500g nectarines (white if possible), pitted (keep the stones) and chopped flesh
• 340 g caster sugar
• 3-6 tablespoons elderflower syrup
• finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 2 large egg whites
• 290 ml of crème fraîche

Method

1. Put the flesh of the fruit, 100 g of sugar, 3 tablespoons of syrup and the nectarine stones in a saucepan. Cook over low heat until the fruit is completely soft. This will take approximately 15 minutes. Add the lemon zest and juice.
2. Leave to cool then pit and blend the flesh and juice in a blender. Put the rest of the sugar in a saucepan with 150 ml of water. Heat gently until the sugar has dissolved, then increase the heat and boil for 5 minutes.
3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and, while beating, pour the boiling syrup over the egg whites. The mixture will become a little runny, but continue beating until everything is smooth. Add the fruit puree to the whites.
4. Whip the cream until it forms soft folds (it’s important not to overbeat it) and add it to the egg white and fruit mixture. Taste. Add more elderflower if you think it needs it, but limit it to 6 tablespoons total, otherwise the ice cream will have too high a sugar content and won’t freeze well.
5. Pour the mixture into a container, cover and freeze overnight. This takes a lot of hard work, so take it out of the freezer for a while before serving (it needs at least 15 minutes to soften).