I love cinnamon ice cream, any spicy ice cream in fact. That delicious combination of warm spice and frozen creaminess just sets my taste buds jangling in a most pleasing fashion.

When I sold the restaurant I sold it as a going concern and therefore lost all my equipment. One of the most precious tools in the kitchen was my old Italian ice cream churn. This had an integral freezing mechanism and worked in basically the same way the old hand cranked salt and ice machines did.
As the salt reduced the ice to a lower than freezing point the beater kept the liquid from forming crystals and so thickened the mixture into that delicious smooth and thick cream we all love.

Domestic ice cream churns, with the best will in the world. just don’t give the same excellent result. I know, I bought one last year. This one has a thick base which you freeze and then insert in the machine and churn.
This method , and other similar ones that I’ve tried, just don’t give the same results as the old salt and ice method or the machine which have their own built in freezer.
Now with either ice and salt, or an integral freezer, the very best way of making ice cream is the custard method. That is one makes a custard with milk (or the liquid of your choice e.g. a fruit puree) Cool it, add it to cream and churn together. Michael Quinn , the chef in Waterford Castle, gave me the excellent tip for Cinnamon Ice-cream of liquidizing a whole cinnamon stick with the milk for the custard which adds a great intense cinnamon tang to the finished ice.
I have a recipe for this method on my web page.
Click on to recipes and then desserts and you will find it.
It works, on my new machine, but not as well as it did in my old churn.

When I worked in the “Wife of Bath” in Kent in the early seventies we used to always make our ice creams by this method; Custard/ cream/ churn.
However in 1975 the local environmental health officer decided that it would have to stop. She said that egg custard made with raw , unpasturised, egg yolks was unsafe for human consumption.(The English got a bit paranoid about eggs at this time, remember Edwina Currie?))
We, in the Wife of Bath, had to go back to the drawing board.
The drawing board in this case, as in so many others, was the food bible of the time ( and indeed the food bible for all time) The Constance Spry Cookery Book.
As an alternative to the “custard” method Constance also gave the” mousse” method of making ice cream. And, God Bless Her , it works.
Furthermore it produces such a thick and unctuous base that, provided one remembers to take it out of the freezer about a half hour before you serve it, this “mousse” ice cream requires no churning and compares quite favourably with the original custard/cream/ churn method.

All of this leads us finally to my recipe for Cinnamon Ice Cream made without a churn.
You will need , at least, a hand held electric beater. A stand alone would be even better. A sugar thermometer is a help but not essential. A coffee grinder which could double as a spice grinder would be useful too but again not essential.

Churnless Cinnamon Ice-cream

200g (7oz.) Caster Sugar
150ml (5 oz.) Water
6 Egg Yolks (Free Range of course)
1 1/2 Cinnamon Sticks (or 3 teaspoons of FRESH ground Cinnamon)
250 ml (9 oz.) Cream
250 g (9 oz.) Crème Fraiche

You need a small but solid pot to make the syrup.
Put the sugar and water on to boil in this and simmer for about 5 mts.
(You want to bring it to 230 F on a sugar thermometer.)
Beat the egg yolks together well in a non plastic bowl.
Now the next bit requires great attention and care to avoid burns.
While still beating pour the very hot syrup on to the egg yolks.
Once that is done you continue to beat the mixture until it cools.
It will thicken and turn paler.
(This is the moment when a stand alone beater would come into its own, because it takes about 10 mts of patient standing to achieve this. I should know as I don’t have a stand alone one any more either)
Now you can have ready the cinnamon.
Don’t think that the grey ground cinnamon which has been in the back of the cupboard since the last time you made a Christmas cake will do for this. Throw this out. Either open a fresh jar for the occasion or break up a stick and a half and grind them to a powder in a coffee grinder.
(Sticks of cinnamon will keep their flavour for a lot longer than ground.
As a bonus you will have a subtle cinnamon flavour from your coffee for a few weeks because no matter how hard you try the flavour will linger in the grinder)
Once the egg mixture is cool beat the cream and the cinnamon together . Start by beating the ordinary cream with the cinnamon and then, once it is stiff , beat in the Crème Fraiche until you have a uniform stiff mixture.
Fold the egg mousse into the cream using light movements and with a large spoon. You do not want to get rid of the trapped air which is what keeps the ice cream from setting into a brick.
Now pour the mixture into a container which has a good lid and freeze overnight.
Take it out of the freezer and into the fridge for a half hour before you serve it.
This is particularly good with any apple tart but its finest moment is when it is partnered with the traditional French tart of Caramelised Apple ; Tarte de Demoiselle Tatin.
(That is there too, in my recipes section, under desserts )