Strawberry Ice Cream Flan

We've just enjoyed another great bank holiday weekend with great friends. Admittedly the weather wasn't great, in fact it was pretty poor, but a few heavy downpours wasn't going to stop us from enjoying ourselves.

The weekend started on a drizzly Saturday morning with a trip to Sainsbury's to stock up on some Prosecco and a lovely Mum/Daughter coffee stop. Whilst in there we spotted a few picnic accessories which I couldn't resist. 

It was then back home to make a chocolate cake before our guests arrived.

We spent a fun filled weekend with a good blogging friend, and her family, as well as another friend and her family. The kids all got on so well together, and, despite the miserable weather when we went to Alton Towers, never moaned a bit.

We managed to buy a huge amount of strawberries between us, some of which were used in our Saturday night Pimms, some for our Sunday night Prosecco and even after the children were let loose on them with a chocolate dip, there was still some left, although they were a little on the soft side by then.

I picked out the 3 best looking strawberries and then made the rest into a sauce for a simple to make ice cream flan.

Strawberry Ice Cream Flan

250g strawberries

50g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 sprigs of mint

115g butter, softened

115g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

115g plain flour

300g vanilla ice cream (approx)

cream - whipped or squirty

• Place the strawberries, sugar, vanilla and mint into a small saucepan
• Bring to the boil and simmer gently for 20 minutes, mashing the strawberries down gently
• Remove from the heat and allow to cool
• Remove the mint and discard
• Make the cake by creaming the butter and sugar together
• Beat in the eggs
• Fold in the flour
• Pour mixture into a lined 24cm cake tin
• Bake in a preheated 180C oven for approx 15 minutes, until springy to the touch
• Cool on a wire rack
• Assemble the cake by spreading the cooled cake with some of the strawberry sauce, adding scoops of ice cream on top, more sauce, cream and strawberries
• Serve immediately

I was provided with some Nielsen Massey Vanilla Extract to use in my cooking