Teena and I have an obsession with ice cream. As soon as we returned from New York, we bought an old water-cooled Carpigiani ice-cream machine that had been advertised in the Trading Post. The owner lived way out in country Victoria, but Teena plied a friend of the family to have it picked up.

When we first plugged the machine in, it tripped the fuse. Oh no, we’ve bought a dud! My youngest brother Elliott, then a second-year apprentice electrician, pulled it apart and declared the European contraption worthy of the trash heap only. We ploughed on, and finally found a three-phase outlet that wouldn’t pop, so we were on the way.

I was raised in a devoutly religious household. Dinner would be served as if by clockwork at 6.30 and was not complete until your plate was empty. Dinner time was very austere as my parents, two grandparents, two dogs, three cats and six children gathered around the table. Oh, but on Fridays — the highlight of the week — my nan Kath would arrive in her hot-pink Volkswagen to take us to the milk bar and let us run wild. We never had shop-bought products as kids, so this was a time to wolf down a Buffalo Bill or double-choc wedge: pure indulgence. Nan’s face would light up as we ate the ice cream, and she giggled excitedly at the oncoming sugar rush. It was the beginning of a beautiful obsession.

Ice cream was originally a way for us to use the left-over egg yolks from all the macarons we ended up making — but nowadays the demand for ice cream leaves us with a lot of egg whites! When we first opened, Pat Nourse of Gourmet Traveller magazine swung by and liked our ice cream enough to send us a link to Humphry Slocombe, the San Francisco godfathers of ice-cream salvation. Ahh, sweet revelation: the heavens opened and our minds exploded. Anything is possible, so let’s experiment… we even let the shockers through to the customers so they can enjoy the laugh of trying to sell a horrifying concoction.

At home we like to add a little gelatine to help capture some air, and we use a fair bit of dextrose monohydrate. Before you gasp that this sounds a little too molecular, head to the beer-brewing aisle of the supermarket and there you will find some. It will give your ice-cream concoctions a smooth creaminess.

Otherwise, there are no rules: just create a flavour and eat it!