I’ve been living in Paris for 9 years and counting, this time around, plus 2 year-long stints as an Erasmus student and then an MBA student and a ski season as a barmaid. You’d think I would have outgrown some of the touristy delights, like seeing the Eiffel Tower sparkling but I still love it, and the 1 am sparkle when they turn off the illumination behind is the most magical. I am very, very fortunate to live in an apartment with a view of the Eiffel Tower, and the Arc de Triomphe. I maintain that this wasn’t why I fell in love with the place – it was the exposed beams, the light, the very reasonably-sized kitchen (by Paris standards) – but my husband will never believe me. I visited it in November, we moved in in December and by July we had started to understand that the downside of living in converted maids’ quarters under the rafters was that it gets incredibly hot when the sun shines.

It’s only May but already it is seriously hotting up here so my thoughts naturally turn to ice cream. I asked for an ice cream maker for Christmas a few years ago so the other thing driving me is the attempt to justify such a large piece of kit.

I have plenty of ideas for new ice cream flavours and combinations I want to try out but the real dilemma is which ice cream base recipe to start from. I cut out dairy quite a few years ago as I was told it could be at the root of my allergies (it wasn’t) and found that soya milk and cream make quite a pleasing base. I have made lots of Nigella’s ice cream recipes, using the egg yolk custard base in her Forever Summer recipe book – the strawberry ice cream and the cheesecake ice cream are amazing – and her condensed milk and cream-based whipped but not churned coffee ice cream. I consult the Ben and Jerry’s recipe book (which I bought as much for the brand merchandise factor as the recipes, and the book is so pleasingly on-brand through and through) and find that they use lightly whipped whole raw eggs in their recipes or no egg at all. And then there’s Dominique Ansel with his strong opinions again, this time urging you to make vanilla ice cream properly (egg yolk custard method) and to leave it pure and unadulterated.

I eventually decide that I need to try something different and plump for the simple egg-free Ben and Jerry version and decide to hedge my bets and also try Dominique Ansel’s custard base. And because I’m into caramel these days, in case you haven’t noticed (Golden gilded salted caramel macarons , Caramelised salted caramel mini cannelés) I plan to make honeycomb to flavour the ice cream and add milk chocolate chips for good measure.

To cut a long story short, my honeycomb ended up strangely pliable (perhaps because of the heat and humidity) but still did the job when scissored into little chunks and folded through the Ben & Jerry’s condensed milk and cream base with milk chocolate chunks. Out of respect for Dominique, I left his vanilla ice cream as he intended.

I polled the friends we had round for dinner, having served them a scoop of each and they were in agreement that whilst the flavour of the vanilla ice cream was good and not too sweet, the texture of the other made it the winner. Given the huge disparity in effort between the 2 bases, I was thrilled to discover that the ridiculously simple one got their vote. A request was made to dial the sweetness down and in other observations, I decided that I don’t like chocolate chips, chunks, or even fish in ice cream as they don’t melt properly when you eat them. So, what flavour to try next?

Onto my regular source of flavour inspiration: impulse buys that need eating up. This week’s prime candidate was a box of rose petal Turkish delight. For my daughter’s first birthday, I made a Turkish delight cake for the same reason and veeeery pleasing it was too. It also struck me that jelly-like pieces would be much better in ice cream than chocolate and so they are.

Sweet rose ice cream with rose petal Turkish delight pieces

Ingredients

• 300ml double cream
• 200ml whole milk
• 125ml (half cup) sweetened condensed milk
• 1 1/2 tbsp rose water (you may need to add less or more, depending on your rose water)
• 100g rose petal Turkish delight or classic rose Turkish delight, chopped into little pieces
• (optional) dash pink food colouring

Method

This really couldn’t be any easier:

Mix together the cream, milk, condensed milk and rose water (adding the rose water a little at a time to check that you want it all)

Pour it into an ice cream maker and leave to churn until quite thick. At this point, add the pieces of Turkish delight.

When it’s done, scrape the ice cream into a tub and pop in the freezer to keep.

You’ll need to take the tub out of the freezer a little before you want to eat it to let it soften up. 30 minutes in the fridge works well for me.