Fruitcake Ice Cream

Ingredients

• 6 eggs
• 50 g ginger, grated
• 1 clove
• 240 ml milk
• 480 ml double cream
• 150 g dark brown sugar
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 3 allspices
• 1 orange
• 120 ml golden rum, divided
• 75 g dried cherries
• 50 g apricot, chopped
• 50 g raisin
• 75 g pecan, toasted and chopped
• 75 g walnut, toasted and chopped

Method

1. The day before you churn, tip the cherries, apricots, raisins and grated ginger into a bowl with 90 ml of the rum. Stir, cover, and leave at room temperature for 24 hours — by morning the fruit will be plump, glossy and properly boozy.
2. In a heavy-based saucepan off the heat, whisk the egg yolks with the dark brown sugar, allspice berries and clove until thick, glossy and ribboning off the whisk, about a minute. The sugar wakes up the moment it hits the yolks — don't let them sit unmixed or they'll go grainy.
3. Pour in the cream and milk gradually, whisking as you go. Set over a medium-low heat and stir constantly with a wooden spoon, scraping the base, for 5–7 minutes. You're looking for 82–84°C — the custard should coat the back of the spoon and hold a clean line when you draw a finger through it. Push it harder than that and the yolks scramble; there's no coming back from that.
4. Strain the custard through a fine sieve into a clean container — the sieve catches the whole spices and any stray threads of cooked yolk. Stir in the remaining 30 ml rum, the orange zest and a generous teaspoon of salt. Taste it now: a custard base needs salt to lift the brown sugar and stop it tasting flat. Adjust before it goes into the fridge, not after. Cover and chill overnight.
5. The next day, toast the pecans and walnuts in a dry pan over medium heat for 4–5 minutes, shaking often, until fragrant and a shade darker. Watch them — nuts go from toasted to bitter in under a minute. Tip onto a plate to cool, then move to the freezer.
6. Drain the soaked fruits (save the syrupy liquid for cocktails or a trifle) and put them in the freezer too. Cold fruit means cleaner ribbons through the ice cream — warm fruit melts the edges of the churn and you lose the marbling.
7. Churn the chilled custard in your ice cream maker per the manufacturer's instructions, until thick and softly scoopable — soft-serve texture, not stiff.
8. Working fast, scrape the ice cream into a freezer-proof container, folding in the chilled fruits and nuts in layers as you go so they're evenly studded, not clumped at the bottom. Taste a spoonful before it sets — one last check for salt and sweetness, since freezing dulls both.
9. Press a sheet of baking paper directly onto the surface (stops ice crystals forming), lid it, and freeze for at least 3 hours until firm enough to scoop.
10. To serve, scoop generous boulders into bowls, scatter over the extra toasted pecans, and finish with a small splash of golden rum over each scoop if you fancy it — the rum hits the cold ice cream and goes syrupy on contact.