This is a picture of my freezer from earlier in the week.  Along side the frozen spinach, edamame beans, tubs of soup and servings of milk that I've frozen, are some ice blocks.

 

As soon as the weather starts getting even vaguely warm I love making ice blocks. I try to make them fruit heavy and avoid using sugar syrups. These ones are sweetened with a couple of tablespoons of maple syrup, but I also often use jam and often the sweetness of the fruit itself is enough.

 

These are peach, maple and walnut ice blocks and I've made a second batch today - this time peach, jam and ginger. Both using up some of the peaches I received the other day.

 

I find ice blocks perfect for satisfying that mid afternoon or post dinner sweet taste. While they take at least five hours to freeze, mostly it's pretty low fuss preparation.

Recently a friend lent me her ice cream maker, so I've been having fun trying out different recipes and discovering how wonderful freshly churned ice cream can be.

The vast majority of recipes involve lots of cream, full fat milk and sugar, putting ice cream firmly in the occasional food category. However, via Twitter, Zoe Cameron pointed me to one simple, delicious and not so unhealthy recipe - this vanilla frozen yoghurt from 101 Cookbooks. It's really, really good, rich tasting with a lovely combination of tart and sweet flavours. I make mine using the lower amount of sugar and have found that sweet enough.

Without an ice cream maker I'm also a fan of making ice blocks. While most recipes use a sugar syrup as the base, I find the sweetness of fresh fruit to be enough.

Making your own ice-blocks is easy, you can whizz up some fresh fruit and pour this mixture into ice block moulds. Add a tiny amount of honey if you want a bit more sweetness and you can also freeze your ice blocks with yoghurt or buttermilk stirred through.  Summer fruits like berries, peaches, nectarines and mangoes are perfect for ice-blocks. In fact, you can find my recipe for Strawberry and Balsamic Ice-Blocks right here.