The secret to making mint chocolate chip ice cream

It used to drive me mad that, whenever my husband and I would go out for dinner, no matter how fancy or lowbrow the place, he would always ignore the puddings on offer in favour of a single scoop of ice cream. He can overlook crème brûlées, lemon meringue tarts, sticky toffee puddings – even eschew a cheese plate – if ice cream is a possibility. It just always seemed quite a boring choice to me – you can keep a tub of ice cream in your own freezer, or maybe get a cone on the beach. Why would you plump for something so simple (so boring!) when there were so many more exciting options?

Of course, as is so often the case, I was wrong. Ice cream is the opposite of boring: it’s a canvas for creativity, a vehicle for flavour, and can tell you a lot about a cook. That possibility to experiment, to play, to capture is exciting. The custard base is able to take on the subtlest of flavours, and lock them into the ice cream: citrus, whole or crushed spices, tea leaves or coffee beans, soft, grassy herbs, rich, even booze. It’s a way to capture and preserve seasonal produce – elderflower, damson, strawberries – at their height, their most luscious and fragrant. Ice cream began to fascinate me: everything was fair game when it came to flavouring. I got to a point where I was just dunking things in cream, churning it, and seeing what stuck: popcorn, cornflakes, hot cross buns, calvados.

Here I find myself returning to a classic of the ice cream genre – but, taking my cues from the power of infusion, it has a small twist. Mint chocolate chip is my ice cream-loving husband’s top favourite, and given that he’s been banging the ice cream drum long before I became hooked, it’s about time he got his just desserts.