what’s one to do when one’s out of ice cream and gets a craving for this cold treat? well, one stops referring to oneself as “one” and “oneself”… and then makes ice cream from scratch.

I used the always faithful Edmonds cookbook (a kiwi classic) for the basic ice cream recipe. The result is the mixture you see below and, for that, you will need to get a few bowls dirty. Here’s how:

beat four egg whites until stiff peaks form. gradually add 1/4 of a cup of caster sugar to the egg whites, one tablespoon at a time, beating until the sugar dissolves before adding the next tablespoon.

in a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and another 1/4 of a cup of caster sugar until thick and pale. add one teaspoon of vanilla.

fold yolk mixture into egg white mixture.

in another bowl, beat 300ml of cream until thick. then fold the cream into the egg mixture.

That’s your basic ice cream done. If you pour that into a container and freeze it, you will have vanilla ice cream. Or frozen boredom, whatever you want to call it. So pick your favourite ingredients to add to it and make it more interesting. For this first attempt, I picked berries and white chocolate. I had a bag of frozen berries in the freezer so used those to make about 1 1/2 cups of berry pulp.

I didn’t have any chocolate chips, only chocolate buttons, so patiently broke them into little chips (because that’s how committed I am to ice cream).

Give the mixture a good stir to ensure the white chocolate chips are all over it and don’t just concentrate in one place. Pour the mixture into a container (or individual serving bowls) suitable for freezing.

Freeze for about three hours or until firm.

Eat it as if ice cream is going out of fashion.