So Father’s day is only days away. Should Father have a capital ‘f’ in this instance? It shall here. Fathers love ice cream. I’m saying this with utter confidence based on evidence from my father and my husband. It’s my husband’s first Father’s day this year, incidentally.

I will. I’m going to take a moment to talk about just how wonderful a father he is. If this is too emotionally cringey then skip to the next paragraph (a warning mainly for my sisters, off you go, skip ahead). Almost every morning without exception he gets out of bed before me to go downstairs and put on porridge, the old fashioned way, in a pan for himself, myself and our wonderful son. I don’t work. I am a mother to my son and a somewhat shoddy housewife, I have nowhere in particular to go and so should really be the one on porridge duty. But, my husband allows me these valuable few minutes of silence and rest.

(skip this paragraph too sisters)

I shalln’t go into all of the examples of how deadly he is, but one other important example is unspoken. It is the light in my son’s eyes when he sees his daddy. The scuttle over to the hall when he hears his daddy’s keys in the door. The cackle when daddy spins him around. The melty face he does when he’s feeling delicate and daddy has to set him down momentarily. The utter, unfaltering love Tom has for him.

Now, come back sisters. This week I’m making ice cream. Vanilla is lovely but not by itself. In our family, one of the favourite, least effort desserts (assuming the pineapple hasn’t made it to the compost heap) is vanilla ice cream with fresh pineapple and homemade butterscotch sauce. So, I thought to myself ‘why don’t I just go ahead and ripple the butterscotch deliciousness through the vanilla ice cream?’ Good question me. This way no butterscotch sauce need ever go to waste and no vanilla ice cream need ever be eaten without accompaniment.

That almost offensively beautiful creature Nigella has a wonderfully simple homemade ice cream recipe that requires no potentially curdling custard or elaborate equipment. The butterscotch sauce however is from a forgotten source. I have it written in my notebook which has no units, no instructions and no references. It is more a list of foodstuffs beneath tasty sounding headings.

scrawly inspiration

I hope all the fathers in your lives (and you, yourselves) enjoy this recipe. Happy Father’s day to all the men folk out there.

Butterscotch Sauce;

Butter                                   60g

Light muscavado sugar    85g

Caster sugar                        60g

Golden syrup                      140g (2/3 of a tin or squeezy bottle)

Cream                                   120g

Vanilla extract                     1 teaspoon

Ice Cream:

Cream                                   450ml

Condensed milk                  260g (2/3 of a tin)

Vanilla extract                    1 generous teaspoon

Start by making the sauce. Put the butter, sugars and syrup into a pan and heat till all the sugar granules have dissolved then turn up the heat and let it bubble angrily for one minute. Then take the pan off the heat.

the smell of this stage is amazing

Measure out the cream and stir the vanilla into it, then pour it all into the melted buttery sugar pot and stir till nicely combined.

that wasn’t too taxing

You’ll be wanting this to be cool but still pourable when the time for rippling comes, so I chose to pour it into a wide, shallow bowl and popped it into the fridge. If you, however, have patience then you can leave it in the pan to cool down (you show off).

To the ice cream bit. Only do this when the sauce is almost cool enough. Pour the cream, condensed milk and vanilla into a large mixing bowl and whisk till soft peaks. That’s that. Vanilla ice cream. You have to give it to Nigella. That is simple.

all hail Nigella

Pour the cream into a generous freezerproof container and place in the freezer for half an hour. Then take it back out and pour in as much butterscotch sauce as you fancy and swirl it through the cream mixture using the end of a spoon or such like. Mine ended up a little less swirly and a little more folded-y, but no matter it’s still delicious. I used all but 100ml of the sauce. The remaining sauce can be heated up and served with your finished ice cream or eaten by the spoonful *cough* sister no. 1 *cough*.

let it be known there were ripples at some stage

Return it to the fridge for at least 6hrs. In this time you can enjoy feeling smug about having just made your own ice cream.

It is scoopable straight from the freezer and is fierce tasty served with poached pears or pineapple or a brownie, most everything really.