Make Your Own Ice Cream Toppings

Ice cream really is the ultimate dessert, it’s just so versatile. Even vanilla ice-cream can be spruced up and transformed into something exotic and delicious by just adding a delicious topping.

Ice cream toppings can be as cheap and simple or as complicated and expensive as you like. Here are a few ideas;

• Caramel Sauce – this is truly scrumptious and perfect for ice-cream, fruit or sponge puds.  The only things you’ll need are 4 oz of light brown sugar, 100 ml of cream (full cream milk will do) and 4 oz of butter. Melt the butter with the sugar over a low heat until the sugar has completely dissolved then stir in the cream and heat it gently. The next step is to lovingly pour over your ice-cream and scoff the lot – delicious.

• Strawberry Topping – for those who prefer their puddings to be fruity. This is delicious on ice-cream as well as pancakes. Combine cleaned, hulled strawberries with a little sugar and vanilla extract and cook over a high heat giving it plenty of stirs until it’s thick, then take off the heat and blend a small portion of the strawberries before mixing it back in with the strawberry chunks. Chill, serve and enjoy.

• Blackberry and Brandy Sauce – one for the grown-ups. You’ll need fresh blackberries, 2 tablespoons of cornflour, 150 g of sugar, around 60 ml of water and a tablespoon of brandy (to taste). Gently heat the blackberries, brandy and sugar and cook until the blackberries are nice and soft, then dissolve the cornflour into the water and stir it into the pan to thicken. Serve hot over ice-cream or pancakes, or cold over ice-cream or pancakes – or just eat it by the spoon.

It really is very quick and easy to make ice-cream into something rather special by adding one of these ice cream toppings.