This started off as something of a culinary conceit: I wanted to recreate the flavour of cheesecake in ice-cream form. I don’t claim it’s an original idea – I’d once eaten cheesecake ice cream in a restaurant in LA, scooped into a lozenge-shaped ball and served alongside a mini blueberry pie – but striving for originality is frankly a grievous culinary crime. Never trust the sort of cooking that draws attention to the cook rather than to the food.
Anyway, this works exceptionally well, and is in some respects easier to make than regular cheesecake. I love to fold crushed digestive biscuits into the smooth, familiarly sharp-sweet mixture once it comes out of the ice-cream maker but isn’t yet frozen solid, but you can leave the ice cream palely pure and sandwich it between two intact digestives as you eat.
175ml full-fat milk
200g caster sugar
125g Philadelphia cream cheese
half teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 egg
juice of half a lemon
350ml double cream
50g digestive biscuits, crumbled (optional)
Heat the milk in a pan, and while it’s getting warm, beat together the sugar, Philadelphia, vanilla and egg in a bowl. Still whisking, pour the hot milk into the cream cheese mixture and pour this back into the cleaned-out pan and make a custard in the regular way.
Pour into a bowl and let it cool, at which time add the lemon juice and then the double cream, lightly whipped.
Freeze following the usual instructions, folding in the crushed digestives – if using – before the ice cream is set solid.