Fresh Coffee & Walnut Ice Cream

So, I am embarking on my "Cooking from the Shelf" challenge in which I try new recipes from the cook books that have been sat dusty and idle on my kitchen book shelf for far too long.

At the weekend, my boyfriend bought a Krups Pixie Nespresso Coffee Machine ...this inspired me to make some coffee ice-cream. As luck would have it, the ice-cream recipe book I bought my daughter a couple of years back has a simple coffee and walnut ice-cream recipe. By simple I mean it only requires coffee, cream, sugar and walnuts and no eggs (other recipes I saw require 6 egg yokes!!).

I'm glad I've had another look at this book  Ice Cream Made Easy: Homemade Recipes for Ice Cream Machines by Annette Yates
. Although it does not feature any photographs, a quick skim through some of the recipes was actually inspiring. In a way, it's quite nice not to have a photo-spread-perfect image of the finished product by which to match your own, usually inferior creation.

The recipes are not just for ice cream  but also sorbets, frozen yogurt, fruit "slushes", frozen deserts and semi-frozen cocktails. Oh yes, I am going to be trying those out too!

As well as recipes, there is also a section at the beginning of the book which explains about the different types of ice cream makers and also how to make ice cream without a machine

Some of the other recipes that I've mentally filed away to try later are: Coconut & Lime Ice Cream, Kulfi, Pineapple Sorbet and Gin & Elderflower Chill.

So, how did the "Coffee & Walnut Ice Cream" making go? Pretty simple really, make some fresh coffee, let it cool. Dissolve some sugar. Mix in the cream and chopped walnuts- mine went all lumpy but this didn't seem to matter as the machine mixes as it freezes anyway. My ice-cream machine makes more of a soft serve style of ice cream so I decided to put it in a tub and put it in the freezer to make it a little firmer.

The result? Superb! I am not really a great fan of coffee icecream but this really was beautiful. I think using fresh coffee makes all the difference as I suspect most commercially available ice cream have coffee "flavour" in them rather than real coffee.

I served it with some tinned peaches (classy!) .

To my surprise, the kids loved it too. My daughter gave it a 9.8 out of 10 and my son an 8.