Gooseberry Ice Cream

Gooseberry Ice Cream Recipe (Utterly Delicious) to make at home

I know this blog is themed around hedging, but…. June and July is the time of year that your gooseberries should be ready for picking – traditionally this is at Whitsun (which is the seventh Sunday after Easter Sunday) but as Easter this year was the earliest that it has been since 1913, on 23^rd March, this means that you traditionally would have been picking by 17^th May, which would have been far too early!

(Pub quiz trivia – And why was Easter so early? It is affected by the lunar cycle: Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon that occurs after the spring equinox. This year, the first day of spring was 20^th March, and the full moon after was 21^st March).

Gooseberries are better for cooking when they are slightly unripe (hard and green) and they certainly keep in the fridge longer when they are like that. Invicta is far and away the best in this category; it has a richer flavour and crops better than Careless gooseberries do.

Gooseberries make a wonderfully different ice cream. Ruth’s recipe, shown below is the tastiest and easiest we have come across:

Gently cook 1lb of gooseberries with very little water (just enough to cover the bottom of the pan) and sugar to taste.
When the berries are soft, puree them and leave to cool.
Beat 4 egg whites to the soft peak stage and then gradually beat in 8oz of caster sugar
Fold the gooseberry puree gently into the egg
Whip half a pint of double cream
Fold the cream into the egg white mixture and freeze

Gooseberry Ice Cream Recipe (Utterly Scrumptious) by
Ruth is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Oh, by the way – Gooseberries are best planted before the New Year (in November and December) so they have more time to establish before they come into growth in the spring.  If you are planning on planting some, take a look at the Soft Fruit bushes on our main website.  We have a great range of soft fruit and there are good tips as well.

Enjoy your plants