How To Make Ice Cream In Five Minutes

Making traditional ice cream is a rewarding but labour-intensive process. It takes several hours and requires a bit of a knack, especially to produce consistent results. It also requires an ice cream machine, which I don’t have, and you might not either.

So, here’s a way to make instant ice cream which doesn’t require any special kit, a spare afternoon, or a lot of experience. The results are affordable, delicious and healthy too, perfect for a stress-free pudding.

The basic formula is this. Put one part dairy, like yoghurt, with two parts frozen fruit in a food processor or a blender. Add something sweet, like honey or golden syrup, and mix it. That’s it.

You will be left with sweet, refreshing ice cream of the perfect consistency. Full credit for this innovation goes to Anna Jones, the cookery writer, whose version with mixed berries was the first I came across.

I’ve included three recipes but you can tinker within the ingredients as much as you like. Supermarkets have dozens of different fruits in the freezer section and all types of dairy — creme fraiche, double cream, yoghurt — work well, as long as they’re full fat.