This recipe isn’t practical by anyone’s metrics, aside from perhaps Louis XIV the Sun King’s, but if you so happen to have a fig tree within your vicinity or circle of acquaintances then it’s a fairly delightful and simple way of making an unexpectedly captivating fig leaf ice cream. Getting something out of the part of a tree you don’t usually eat is fun; and arguably prudent, if not practical, plus the method is simple and the texture is stunning.

I am always happiest when devising ice cream flavours, and grow twitchy when too much time elapses between new ones. This is a recipe I’ve been holding onto for a couple of months even though I made it before my fig leaf gin; not wanting to overwhelm you all with fig leaves I paused on publishing this immediately. After a dinner recipe testing session went awry — well, not exactly awry, but worse: underwhelming — I was glad to have this still, unmelted, in my back pocket. And as the saying goes, better to be feckless than mid! You may or may not recall me describing the flavour of the fig leaf gin as “elusive, perfumed, twiggily vegetal with a long, faintly jammy flush of sweetness at the finish that hints at the fruit’s grainy pink interior.” This description bears repeating with this ice cream, only it’s diffused through the mellow bloom of whipped cream, and I noticed the faintest — and I promise, entirely welcome — hint of celery hovering like a ghost. It’s warmed up with the slightest dusting of cinnamon and a droplet of almond essence, both of which coax the ice cream into coherence and lift the fig leaves’ existing flavour elements.

And the texture! The exceptional simplicity of the method — even with the brief infusion of fig leaves in cream — and the minimal ingredients list somehow leaves you with an ice cream so utterly smooth and spoonable, straight from the freezer, that it almost tastes store-bought. I haven’t had time to try this method on other ice creams — and it’s really just a slight sidestep from the one I first read about in Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat and Nigella Bites, based solely on whipped cream and icing sugar. Here, I can only surmise that mixing whipped cream with a little liquid cream is what creates the magnificent texture, and long to test this science on other flavours soon.

This is unlikely to win over your entire family — particularly children, unless they’re those suave urban children who have been exposed to things like cardamom and $9 coffees — but every now and then you need a showstoppingly sophisticated ice cream that is utterly for the adult palates in the room.

For more mildly challenging ice creams that you’re not likely to find in a store, I recommend my recipes for corn, raspberry and mascarpone ice cream; café brȗlot ice cream, and Twin Peaks ice cream. All no-churn of course!

And if I may, a reminder that you can sign up here to hear irregular and unobtrusive updates and details about my forthcoming cult hit novel, Hoods Landing. So unobtrusive that I haven’t had time to do any updates yet but much like my 21st century novel, they are forthcoming!

Fig leaf ice cream

Beguiling and mysteriously-flavoured — an elegant and grown-up ice cream with incredible texture. Recipe by myself, no-churn as always — you can count on me to never capitulate to Big Ice Cream Maker!

• 4 or 5 large, fresh fig leaves, with some stem attached
• 600ml cream
• A drop of almond essence
• The merest whisper of cinnamon — about 1/8 teaspoon
• 175g icing sugar

1: First, tear each leaf into a few pieces, removing any overtly browning edges. A little colouring and spotting on the leaves themselves is fine. Set aside.

2: Pour 150ml of the cream into a wide saucepan and gently warm to juuuust barely simmering with tiny bubbles around the edge. Once you see the surface appear to wrinkle and tighten, you’re not far off. Remove the pan from the heat and drop in the torn up fig leaves, prodding with a spoon to make sure they’re all submerged. Set aside for about an hour, or until completely cool.

3: After the cream has infused, whip the remaining 450ml cream — and I do this by hand with a whisk which really doesn’t take as long as you think it will. Once it starts to aerate and thicken a little, add the droplet — and I do mean just a drop — of almond essence, the faint dusting of cinnamon, and the 175g icing sugar, sieved. Continue whisking until the cream is thick enough that you can drag the whisk through and up, leaving track marks behind and lifting a soft peak of cream up with it.

4: Strain the remaining cooled, fig leaf-infused cream through a sieve into the bowl of thickened cream and fold the two together. Use a spatula to press the cream-soaked leaves against the sieve to try and eke out as much flavour as possible. Discard the sieved leaves.

5: Spatula the figgy cream into a freezer safe container, and freeze for 4-6 hours (depending on if your dish is wide and shallow or narrow and deep) or overnight. I find that this recipe is spoonable straight from the freezer, which is delightful.

Makes around 1 litre.

music lately:

City of Millions by Red Temple Spirits. A lead singer flinging out the lyrics “I’m always tired and I cannot sleep” in a jagged wail…that’s the ticket.

Tonight by Pinkpantheress, she manages to pack whole worlds into her tiny short songs — I love the way the recurring synth chord feels almost like a record skip, growing more and more hypnotic with each beat.

A Cigarette and a Silhouette by Mildred Bailey (Couer d’Alene), as if the title weren’t enough, the arrangement and Bailey’s butter-smooth voice make me feel like I’m waiting in the shadows for someone wearing a red rose on their trenchcoat lapel.

Funtime by Iggy Pop with David Bowie, as performed on the Dinah Shore Show in 1977 — this video includes a startlingly candid and languid interview between Dinah Shore and a young David and Iggy Pop — plus Rosemary Clooney chiming in. David Bowie was no stranger to appearing next to one or another elder statesman but Iggy is unsurprisingly less polished and yet the generational overlap makes for something remarkable and hilarious and oddly touching. Not that it’s cloying either, I mean, Dinah Shore asked the former, “what happens with David Bowie if you’re going to continue to sublimate your particular talent, can your ego stand that?” and to the latter, “you poured hot wax on yourself once?”

PS: As we enjoy our food we can’t forget those going violently without it. Though the people of Gaza are existing under barbaric cruelty with aid continually blocked, NZ-based humanitarian org ReliefAid’s Gaza Appeal continues to work to deliver water sourced and treated from within Gaza so give it if you’ve got it. For some ways to help near and far the reliably great Emily Writes has compiled a compact list of things you can do. While the first submission prompt has closed, there are plenty of good links including mutual aid to directly support families in Gaza.