An amazing trip last week to the School of Artisan Food to spend a day leaning about making ice-cream with Kitty Travers from La Grotta Ices.

The idea of the day (which I'd literally been waiting years for & was ridiculously excited to do) was we'd split up and make 9 different recipes/methods/styles of vanilla ice-cream then come together at the end of the day & taste the differences… well that didn't quite go to plan…

The day was jam-packed and began with a fascinating talk from the really knowledgeable & interesting Kitty which filled my brain with facts & ideas.

Next up was splitting into groups and I chose to make Vanilla Parfait as I've never done much sugar work & the idea of heating sugar to a temperature etc appealed and I for sure learned a lot… especially how variable a temperature a thermometer can give depending on the angle it's held etc which answered some problems I've had making a custard for ice-cream.

Then, once we'd make all the ice-creams, and they were cooling, we broke for an amazing lunch and then came back to make some sorbets ('Leafy Black Currant' and 'Fig Leaf and Raspberry' where I discovered 'brix' and that fig leaves smell and taste like… coconut!).

Then it was onto the ice-cream making and when it all came apart… the school had just got new ice-cream makers (attachments for Kenwood chefs) and no-one seemed to know how to put them together or use them… so they were breaking or our ice-creams weren't freezing…oops.

But all was not lost and we resorted to the old-fashioned method of using ice & salt which was fun to do, and worked somewhat, but sadly by the time the last one was done the others had pretty much melted so our taste-test was more tasting very sweet (food gets less sweet when cold so ice-cream bases are sweeter than you'd eat them if not frozen) slushy milkshakes so it was hard to tell any differences other than 'too sweet' and 'excessively sweet'.

It was hugely disappointing to not be able to do the bit I mainly attended for (as let's face it, it's highly unlikely I'm going to make 9 different ice-creams at home to compare them) but I learned a lot and am excited to see how my new knowledge means I make better ice-cream