And probably one of the best tasting too! Christmas madness is starting to kick in around here. It will be a quiet but fun affair Chez Chica and Big Man – my parents are coming for Christmas so whilst it will be a small group, the food will still be cooked and enjoyed together, glasses will be raised to loved ones not with us, and of course silly hats will be worn.
As you know, Christmas tends to be quite a multicultural affair in our home. That way we get to enjoy the best of everything. Big Man is on his way back from a trip to Spain and hopefully his suitcase is full of tasty goodies from Andalucía. We’ll be eating Panettone on Christmas morning and after lunch we’ll hotly debate whether Turrón or Torrone is better. And in a change from the roast lamb or beef we generally eat, we’re going for Goose this year. Yum…it’s been a few years since I cooked one as they’re not so good for larger gatherings as although they have loads of flavour, you need to buy one the size of a bungalow to feed a crowd.
I’m making things that I know we’ll love (why wouldn’t I?!) and I know my mum, although not a big dessert eater, loves coffee flavoured ice cream. Big Man is of the opinion that a law should be passed to make it obligatory to eat ice cream every day and my dad and I will let them tuck in whilst we tuck into the cheese and nuts.
This is a Nigella Lawson recipe, and perfect for a last minute dessert if you don’t fancy making custard…
Ingredients (makes about a litre)
- 600ml of double cream (heavy or whipping cream)
- 1 tin of condensed milk (mine was 397g)
- 4 tablespoons of instant espresso coffee powder
Whip all the ingredients together until thick and soft peaks are formed. Pour into your freezer proof container and freeze until solid. No churning, no whipping. Remove from the freezer a few minutes before you want to eat it to let it soften a little and enjoy. See, I told you it was easy!
Chica Andaluza 
We will definitely give this a try, have a lovely Christmas all.xx
Can highly recommend it! You have a fab time too – will call you soon x
Truly easy indeed! Happy Holidays!
Like magic!
That is a genius recipe….we here are of the same ice cream religion as the Big Man:)
Bless you all!
That sounds wonderful. The Management will be happy to have that available over Christmas (along with the Christmas Pudding ice cream already there!)
Ooh Christmas Pudding Ice Cream…do tell, sounds marvellous!
Love coffee ice cream and love the simplicity of this. Hope you have a wonderful holiday celebration and feast with your family and friends.
Thanks Betsey – I had to do several taste tests just to be sure it really was as good as I’m telling you all. And yes…it is! All good wishes to you and yours and hopefully a more peaceful 2014 for you than this year has been!
Panettone…Torrone…seems like the Chez Chica is going all rhymey with their Christmas fare this year ;). Wish I could find a recipe for torrone that didn’t involve egg whites but that would be a bit like a pavlova…somewhat impossible methinks.
My mum used to breed geese and sell them at Christmas and when I was a little kid I was terrified of them. They ALL looked like bungalows to me and were only marginally less scary sans feathers but complete with giblets (ech).
Big man and Steve would get on. Icecream is not negotiable and now he has discovered how easy and how much better homemade icecream is to prepare (and how little it costs…) he has been converted. Icecream will grace our Christmas table as well :). The only sad thing about being a vegan is that you don’t get to tackle a cheese platter with gusto. I am a complete and utter cheese hog. I love them all. “Give me your brie, your Stilton, Your swaddled masses yearning to breathe free, the glorious produce of your teeming shore. Send these, the creamy, blue veined and strong, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” (Those Frogs certainly knew how to give a gift didn’t they? and it didn’t stop with the Statue of Liberty!)
Even though bacon, buttered toast and coffee smell like heaven, a good platter of ripe heavenly cheese is the hardest thing on this planet for narf7 to resist. I probably ate more cheese in the first half of my life than a body has a right to consume in a lifetime so being sans cheese in this half is ostensibly the sensible thing to do…but give me a room with a door I can close, a shipment of cheese that made a wrong turn at Albuquerque and a lock on the inside and I really can’t vouch for the debauchery that would happen inside that room…it wouldn’t be pretty…
Love your interpretation of “the words”! Very clever indeed. I’ve always thought that if I was a veggie I’d really miss bacon (as so many people say) but being vegan and not eating cheese – well…I don’t think I could do it. Given the choice between chocolate and cheese, cheese wins hands, fingers and toes down. I worked in Paris for a couple of years and I was in stinky cheese heaven. I tell you what, you behave yourself and I’ll eat extra for you?!
You will? A TRUE FRIEND :). Make sure to gorge yourself properly ma’am…can’t be having with someone who doesn’t take FULL advantage of a nice big cheese platter…go easy on the crackers, they fill you up too soon and if you could send some brie and camembert scented thoughts wafting over to a virtuous narf7 I will take a hit in the calorie quotient to lessen the load 😉
Happy to oblige…anything for a pal! Big Man has just got back this afternoon from Spain and he had almost 3kg of quince paste to eat with our Christmas cheese in his very heavy suitcase – now that’s definitely vegan and it’s good with wine and nuts…shall I dish you up a plate while you just sniff the cheese?!
That sounds like the equivalent of what it must be like to spend your days damned in hell ma’am… I think I will just spend the rest of my day whipper snipping the back block in the heat with visions of my heady hey-days of cheese gustatory events dancing through my head in place of the quince paste sugar plums 😉
😦 😦
Sorry…quince paste and I are not friends but those memories of cheese will take me paste the paste memories (still bear the scars 😉 ) and on to a brighter cheese laden memory filled day 🙂
Memories of good times past are always good to hang on to!
But not the excess “baggage” that accompanied them ;). Lucky I am not still indulging or I wouldn’t be able to make the trek up to the back block let alone spend the next 4 hours whipper snipping (strimmering) the wasteland that is our back block…wish me luck… I am going in!
You go girl….nothing but admiration for you!
Nothing but fear here…its going to be hot today…BLOODY hot…I have to judge it just right or narf7 will suddenly be subject to the sunny equivalent of a magnifying glass with narf the ant…EEK!
Stay cool….
Wow! Didn’t expect it to be THAT easy 🙂
I told you it was! Actually, a pal told me I shouldn’t have blogged it and given away the secret 😉
I’m doing goose too – make sure you do lots of stuffing 😉
Do you know the Catalan thing with the log (el Tió) and the Turrón?
Ooh no, will go and watch the video. Am undecided between an old favourite Delia stuffing with prunes and Armagnac (fabulous!) or this one I came across recently from Valentine Warner http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/stuffed_goose_with_port_05072
How are you doing yours?!
I’m not a fan of fruit and meat, so I’m doing it with sourdough bread, Cumberland sausage meat, chestnuts, onion, garlic, butter and herbs. Prunes are the traditional thing with goose though – I think the recipes from both Delia and Valentine will be very good 🙂
Ooh – sounds good too! We’ll have to compare notes afterwards 🙂
It does fry up well the next day for breakfast 🙂
Now you’re talking!
Coffee flavored anything goes down well in this house, the ice cream would even more so. Hope you can fit your goose through the front door, let alone into the oven. Have a great Christmas!
Luckily the goose is not too enormous as there are only a few of us!
Panettone here also! As for the last number of decades 🙂 ! Prawns instead of duck . . . well, this is Down Under 🙂 ! No ice cream, but a tad of well made soft cheeses . . .!! Will be thinking of you and wishing you the very best for the festivities . . . thank you for being ‘there’ !!!!
We’ll be having the prawns on Christmas Eve – a big seafood dinner 🙂 Will think of you too and your Down Under Christmas – sounds like wonderful fun!
Hope you have a lovely Christmas. But, with that ice cream, how could you not?
Ah, the same to you too!
wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas xox
And to you and yours Tandy!
This sounds like a great celebration that you’ll be sharing, Tanya. I’ve never roasted a goose and will be interested to see how yours goes. I bet it will be fantastic! Love that ice cream and how easy it is to prepare. The last thing you want to do n the days leading up to Christmas is to be stirring custard on the stove. As much as I’d enjoy your menu, Ive one question. Where are the castagne? 🙂
How funny that you mentioned the castagne. We have fresh ones that we’ll be roasting over the open fire but I am on a mission to find some good marrons glacés as my dad is a huge fan and asked the other day if I had got any in for Christmas!
YUM! And yay a homemade ice-cream I can actually eat due to its lack of raw eggs!!! Shall let you know how the de-caf version goes, haha.
Hadn’t thought of the egg free thing but yay! And I bet with some decent decaff coffee it would be fabulous 🙂
Yum. I can only imagine all the wonderful food you’ll have this season. Happy holidays!
It will be fun! Happy Holidays to you and your loved ones too 🙂
I can make this if no ice cream machine is needed. Coffee ice cream is one of my husband’s favorite flavors.
No machine needed and the texture is amaing even without churning!
Keep recipes like that coming. 🙂
Will do 🙂
Whenever I make ice cream at home without a churner it turns out icy on top (and within) after freezing and I really hate that. It’s like scratching nails on a blackboard. Just brings me the shudders! 😦
Is there something I’m doing wrong, you think? This recipe is so easy I’d love to give it a try, I’m just worried it’ll come out icy, too. Any thoughts? 🙂
I think if there are eggs in it and it’s a custard type sauce, you do need to churn it. For some reason (and I don’t know the science!) this one doesn’t need churning and does’t go icy. I also have another recipe which I will have to post with one that has honey in it and also doesn’t need churning!
This is the recipe my mother used to make, i had forgotton all about it, i must try it, evidently i can condense milk in a slow cooker…. I do have an incream churn thingy, i make fresh icecream all summer and still have some in the freezer.. Love it.. thank you tanya.. c
It’s such a good recipe – your mother was a wise woman! Have now made a cassata version and it’s fabulous! Take care celi x
This is the best – I make it all the time! I have tried it with cocoa powder and Tia Maria too. You can also make a fab lime ice cream using lime juice and zest, with the cream and condensed milk – wonderful in the summer!
Love your versions – I made a cassata one so mow I need to try the lime version 🙂
What a great recipe! Weather outside is not too appropriate right now, but I will definitely give it a try once it gets a bit warmer!
I’m not usually one for ice cream in winter but this was so good – like an ce cold after dinner coffee!
I’m playing catchup with my blog reading and cannot wait to make this! Coffee icecream is second only to caramel in my book! But most things run second to caramel… 😉 Hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. x
Ooh now you’ve got me thinking – how about this ice cream with a caramel (possibly salted caramel) sauce?!
Hi Tanya!
It’s so nice to be back. 🙂
Have looked through your wonderful recepies and finally found something I know. Yes, I have tried this ice-cream, only without coffee. It tastes really good.
By the way, do you know how to cook homemade condensed milk? I learned a nice and fast recipe recently and would be glad to share it with you if you like.
Hi Olga and welcome back! Glad you liked this recipe – and no, I don’t know how to make homemade condensed milk so would love to hear your recipe 🙂 Thanks!
OK, I’ll share it with you. Here is what you need:
– 200 g milk
– 200 g sugar
– 20 g butter
Put all the ingredients into a cooking-pot, bring to the boil, then boil during 10 minutes over a high flame and turn off. Your condensed milk will become thicker while cooling. Here is how it looks: http://olga0207.ru/2014/01/08/domashnyaya-sgushchenka
Tastes really good. I was happy to come across that recipe. 🙂
Thank you so much Olga – I will give it a go very soon!
Wawww, i must must try to make it. thanks for sharing this awesome recipe
nice article , ilike it