Recipe: Prune Ice Cream

This is another one of those recipes which is so simple it almost doesn't merit writing down; I was a little sceptical when I first tried it, as it is based only on cream, rather than on a custard, and with the lightweight cream we get in Italy I had my doubts that the finished product would be dense enough to be satisfying. Not a bit of it! It was as rich and unctuous and delicious as you could hope for....

For four.

Ingredients: two cups of soft, stoned Prunes; Marsala(or Cream Sherry, in the absence of Marsala), sufficient to cover the Prunes in a bowl; two tablespoons of Sugar; 8 fl oz Cream.

Method:

1. Macerate the Prunes in the alcohol for three or four hours, then liquidize the whole lot briefly in a blender.

2. Put the liquidised Prunes and the Sugar into the ice cream machine, add the Cream, and churn until ready - normally about twenty minutes, depending upon your machine.

3. Freeze until needed. This ice cream doesn't go very hard in the freezer, so there's probably no need to take it out of the freezer before you actually need to serve it.