Fruit Ice Creams

I'm not really a creamy/chocolatey pudding person.
Don't get me wrong, I'll eat either if they're there, but, given the choice, my preference is for the Fruity Dessert (or actually, even better, just the fruit).
All this means that, when I saw the fruit theme for this month's BSFIC, I was beside myself with glee. Or something.

I make a mean strawberry ice cream, and also a pretty awesome blueberry, so I knew I'd be able to do something good.

However, when it came to it, I was feeling quite inspired from my visit to Suda Thai, and also by a weird can of mango puree which had been languishing in my cupboard for well over a hundred years (give or take), so I thought I'd go for a mango and chilli sorbet.

I'd also been talking about attempting custard/ice cream with coconut milk instead of milk/cream, so that was my second scoop option.

And, just for completeness, and because three is clearly better than two, I completed the look with a lime sorbet.

I made the mango sorbet by blending together the ancient mango puree, some real mango, lemon juice and some mint and chilli. Oh, and gin, obviously (actually quite handy to stop it freezing too hard).
I then chucked it into the ice cream machine and churned till nice and sorbetish.

For the coconut milk ice cream, I made my usual custard recipe, but substituted coconut milk for the milk/cream. It came out a slightly weird colour, but tasted utterly delicious. In fact, it can only have been luck that there was any left to churn at all.

For the lime sorbet, I squeezed a million (ok, about 8) limes, which gave me about 250ml juice.
I made a simple sugar syrup of 400mls water, 400mls sugar and the zest of three of my limes. I mixed it all together, with some imaginary gin (turns out we'd finished the real gin) and churned the mixture till frozen.

Et voila, tropical fruity threesome!

I was really pleased with all three - the coconut is creamy and rich and the mango is fruity, chilliey and minty, but the lime is the real revelation - it took nearly no time to make, and was really really delicious.
Once I've finished this batch, I shall definitely be making it again.

This was supposed to be my entry for Kavey's June Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream, but, as ever, I am a little bit behind. Still - better late than never, I guess :-)