Although I have four extremely large tins of mandarins, I opened a much smaller one yesterday to try mandarin flavour ice cream.

I had the second pot of double cream to use, but no more yogort. So I thought I’d try it with just cream to see what the difference was. Just as well, as the puréed fruit was pretty runny. I wouldn’t have wanted to introduce any more liquid in the form of value yogurt.

Tin of value mandarins, Asda 312g/35p
300ml double cream, Asda 85p/300ml
Tin condensed milk, 400g, 50p
This made a litre of ice cream
Total cost £1.70, serves 10 x 100ml servings, 17p a serving

Purée the mandarins, juice and all. Whip the cream until firm, stir through the condensed milk, then add the fruit. Tip into a plastic box and freeze until solid.

Remove from the freezer about half an hour before eating to allow it to soften. DP was, again, hacking away at a dish of chocolate and rhubarb ice cream last night. So impatient. It must have been like eating ice cubes!

Another successful experiment! I was a bit anxious about the runniness of the mixture, anticipating that it might be too hard. And true, it was like a rock fresh out of the freezer. But half an hour sat on the gentle warmth of the worktop (it’s much cooler here today) and it transformed itself into a dish of utter delight. The texture is very creamy, from the amount of cream, with no yogort, and very smooth, no ice crystals forming from the pulp and juice of the fruit. The taste is mellow, gently orangey, a very slight bitterness from the fruit, wonderful smoothness on the tongue. My only criticism is that it could be more mandariney. I could always let it melt completely and stir through another tin! That’s the beauty of this no-churn mix.

Edit: I puréed another tin and added it in. I wouldn’t do it again tho, it still doesn’t taste strongly of mandarin and it’s got a couple of icy bits as well now.