Honeycomb ice cream

Ingredients

• 10g butter
• 1 heaped tablespoon bicarbonate of soda
• 150g caster sugar
• 100g golden syrup

FOR THE ICE CREAM:

• 570ml whole milk
• 290ml whipping cream
• 225g caster sugar
• 8 egg yolks
• 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

Instruction

1. Cover the base of a baking dish with foil or baking parchment and butter it ready for the honeycomb. Fill your sink with cold water. Mix the bicarbonate of soda with 1½ tablespoons water in a small bowl and set aside.
2. Put the sugar and golden syrup with 150ml water in a large saucepan. The pan will look much too big, but the mixture will bubble up later on and needs room to expand. Gently heat until the sugar has dissolved, then boil steadily until it reaches the hard crack point: 154°C on a sugar thermometer. If you don’t have a sugar thermometer, take out a little of the hot sugar on a spoon and drop it into a glass of cold water. If it sets to something that will snap when broken, it is ready.
3. Take it off the heat and put the saucepan in the water-filled sink to stop it cooking any more. Add the bicarbonate of soda mixture and, using a spoon with a long handle, stir. Immediately pour it on to the foil or parchment in the dish. Leave to cool completely, then bash it with a rolling pin into golden shards.
4. For the ice cream, put the milk, cream and sugar into a heavy-based saucepan and bring slowly to the boil. Pour this onto the egg yolks in a large bowl, beating with a wooden spoon or whisk as you do so. Rinse the sauce- pan, put the mixture back into it and put back on the hob on a low heat. Add the vanilla. Heat very gently, stirring from time to time, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon and to leave a path when you run your finger across the spoon. Do not allow the mixture to boil or it will curdle. Pour the mixture into a bowl and set the bowl in some cold water in the sink. Once it’s cooled down, churn in an ice-cream maker or freeze in a shallow container. If using the freezer, tip the ice cream into a food processor 2-3 times during the freezing process and pulse to break up the ice crystals.
5. When the ice cream is nearly ready, but still slightly soft, add half to two- thirds of the chunks of honeycomb. Keep churning until firm, then put it into a shallow container, cover with greaseproof paper and put it in the freezer. Sprinkle with some more honeycomb chunks when you serve.