Mash the strasberries with half the sugar (ie. 2oz or 50g) in a bowl. Place the bowl in the refrigerator to chill whilst making the rest of the recipe. Pour the milk into a saucepan and bring slowly up to boiling point but do not boil. Remove from the heat, place the split vanilla pod into it and leave to one side to infuse for about 10 minutes.

In a bowl, beat and mix together the egg yolks and sugar until thick. Carefully remove the vanilla pod from the pan of milk. Pour the milk carefully through a fine strainer into the mixture of egg yolks and sugar whilst stirring. Pour the mixture back into the pan and heat gently, stirring until the custard thickens. REMEMBER: DO NOT BRING TO THE BOIL OR IT WILL PROBABLY CURDLE. When you can see a film form over the back of your spoon it's time to remove the saucepan from the heat. Leave to cool.

When cool, stir in the cream followed by the mixture of mashed strasberries and sugar.
Transfer the complete mixture into an ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer's instructions. Serves 6-8

The strasberry is an unusual variety of strawberry - with a different size, shape, smell and taste to the common garden strawberry most commonly on sale in food stores. It is not easy to find fresh strasberries and in fact I have only come across them readily available in supermarkets twice in the last few years. Ironically they were grown more readily about 50 years ago! However, if you can get your hands on a punnet of them, grab them quick because they taste incredible - much stronger and juicier than regular strawberries. The ice cream I made using fresh strasberries was the strongest tasting, strawberry flavor I've ever experienced. Something really special.

If you want to see my photographs of strasberries just click here.

Strasberry ice cream by its nature is classed as an unusual ice cream so if you like to experiment with your ice cream check out my other unusual recipes for homemade ice cream.

Author: Shelagh Caudle