This week is Holy Week, or as I’ve decided to call it, Holy Mole Week, because yesterday saw another one of my epic gatherings at Orchard Cottage, this time for a Mexican fiesta party featuring tamales, mole sauce, black beans, salsa and for dessert: chocolate cake and ice cream.
My original plan was to do chilli chocolate brownies with vanilla ice cream, but a chocolate tour in Camden with Jennifer Earle and Kavey Favelle introduced me to Artisan du Chocolate and their Lumi milk chocolate bar. Lumis are ripe limes boiled in salt water and sun-dried, giving the the chocolate a fresh tanginess. Given that my meal plan already involved lots of chilli and rich flavour from the mole sauce, I loved the idea of adding a fresh element to the cake, rather than more chilli. Plus, lime was totally fitting with the Mexican theme.
As for ice cream, I debated whether to make lime sorbet, coconut ice cream or avocado ice cream, and in the end decided to make all three, it what is now infamously known as “the trio” (a phrase I apparently kept repeating all night long, following many bottles of Prosecco – I still maintain that the phrase has a nice ring to it).
All of the ice creams in “the trio” were good, really good, but the avocado was absolutely outstanding and perfect with the cake.
I made the ice cream on Kavey’s suggestion, who did an avocado ice cream on her blog last year. I was ultimately drawn to David Lebovitz’s recipe in The Perfect Scoop
- 3 medium ripe avocados (about 675g)
- 3/4 cup (150g) sugar
- 1 cup (240g) sour cream
- 1/2 cup (125ml) heavy cream
- 1 Tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice
- Big pinch of salt
- Cut open the avocados, remove the pits, and scoop out the flesh.
- Combine all ingredients in a blender and puree until absolutely smooth.
- Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
I’m including the avocado ice cream in Kavey’s Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream round-up under the fruit theme (yes, avocado is a fruit!).
So glad your feast went so well — sounds like another marvellous weekend at Orchard Cottage! And so pleased you liked the idea of an avocado ice cream to go with the rest of the feast. David is definitely the ice cream guru and his recipe looks really good. Was lovely to see you the weekend before. x
Wish you could have been there Kavey, but I know there will be other feasts in our future. You really do have all the best ideas, especially when it comes to ice cream! See you again soon, I hope. (I haven’t forgotten about Islay!)
Oh how I lol’d at the hole mole. This ice cream definitely raises the bar.
Love a good “LOL”!
I’ve always been wary of avocados in sweet things since my green-smoothie-avocado-instead-of-banana-disaster-of-2012. Let’s just say poor George actually drank the thing but I wisely threw it out. So so so disgusting.
The sugar & lime juice do make this sound intriguing though! If I ever get that ice cream maker I might have to give it a try.
Gorgeous recipe, Monica 😀 avocados are so creamy so I imagine they would make the best ice cream! Need to give it a go. I linked to this recipe in my latest blog post ‘banana almond and baobab nice cream’ 😉 x