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.