A gently spiced dinner and summer’s most fun dessert
It is the fleeting nature of ice-cream that appeals to me – the idea of catching something at its brief moment of perfection. In the case of ice-cream, that’s somewhere along the road from rock hard to milky puddle. They may bring with them a sense of peace and lazy summer days, but ices also come with a sense of urgency. I was the kid that would always choose a wafer over a cornet, fascinated by the way the fragile biscuits stuck to your lips, but also enjoying the race to finish before the block of vanilla ice-cream dripped down my shirt.
The ice-cream sandwich has come a long way since I was in short trousers. Its flavourless wafers have now been ditched in favour of crisp cookies that flatter the flavour of the ice. I made a lemon version this week – a simple no-churn job with yoghurt, cream and lemon curd – and held it between thin, crisp biscuits speckled with grated orange zest. Matching wafer to ice-cream can be fun: chocolate ice-cream and ginger cookies; almond wafers to raspberry sorbet; pistachio biscuits holding saffron ice-cream. You can make almond tuiles, ginger snaps or the one I especially like, a softer shortbread-style cookie that doesn’t go too hard in the freezer.