Recipe Corner: Lemon Freeze
This is a very simple summer dessert from Katie Stewart’s Times Cookery Book
First, line a regular 9 inch pie dish with aluminium/aluminum foil.
For the crust you need:
2 oz crushed cornflakes
2 oz castor/bakers sugar
2 oz melted butter
Stir these together then, then pack into the foil as you would a cheesecake crust.
For the ice cream filling you need:
2 eggs
1 can sweetened condensed milk
¼ pint of heavy/double cream
Juice and rind of 2 lemons
1 oz of castor/bakers sugar
Separate the eggs. Beat the yolks with the condensed milk, then beat in the cream, and then add the lemon rind and juice gradually, beating as it thickens. If you are nervous about salmonella, do this over boiling water until it has been hot enough long enough to assuage your fears. Separately beat the whites till stiff, then add the sugar, and keep beating. Fold into the lemon mixture, pour on top of the crust, then freeze for several hours.
I find the recipe fairly forgiving – I prefer more crust, with less sugar (I double the cornflakes and the butter, but not the sugar), and find that the ice cream can take 3 lemons, for a tarter flavour.
You could also use egg substitute instead of real eggs to avoid the salmonella problem. One question: what is castor/baker’s sugar?
Scott, look for ‘caster sugar’ here.
Sorry about the spellling. Caster sugar is very fine sugar (sometimes called “superfine” sometimes “Bakers” sugar in the states). To be perfectly honest, I don’t find regular granulated sugar much inferior….
The ingredients include 1/4 cup heavy cream, but you do not do anything with it. I am guessing you beat it and fold it in along with the egg whites. (By the way, as written—i.e. without the cream—this is close to the recipe for a key lime pie, using key limes instead of lemons, and putting the merangue on top instead of folding it in.)
Thanks david—fixed. The cream goes with the condensed milk. Yes, it is close to key lime pie, except that in that case baking is an easy way of dealing with the salmonella problem…
I beleive “standard” British sugar is more coarse than standard American sugar, so the use of finer caster sugar for certain applications is needed. You probably don’t need to but super fine sugar in the US. At worst, run your regular sugar through a food processor.
I immediately substituted a graham cracker crust for your cornflake crust in my imagination. Before I try this out, do you have any strong words in favor of your vision?
Mmm-mmm, the graham cracker crust is genius. Please, jackmormon, post your results.
When you say “rind”,do you mean “zest”?
Leave out the eggs, and put the whipped cream on top, and you have a “Lemon Icebox Pie” like my step-grandmother made.
Pasteurized eggs are now readily available and can be used for raw egg recipes. In this recipe, the citric acid in the lemons will kill Salmonella, provided the freezing time is increased to, at least, overnight.