Mangy toes and eczema woes/-/ butter milk ice cream

As girl but mostly as a human being, there are topics which nobody ever talks about unless it covered by the lightness of humour. These are the topics which are designated to be the conversation starters of drunken nights out and brutish discern for femininity; you know jokes about farts, weird rashes and of course mangy body parts. Not even going to doctor about these things are safe any more because we are so afraid of the outcome.

Like a majority of the population I was not blessed with pure white skin and perfect limbs, so I do suffer a chronic and re occurring battle with eczema and my clumsiness has resulted in a number burns and disfigurements to my hand and feet. Yes, I have dropped a meat mallet on my toes; not a pretty sight.

They might not have gotten so bad if I was not so ashamed to go ask for help to treat them. Of course like a majority, I let it get worse to the point antibiotic s had to be called in to the fight the infection.




While Halloween has seen the boom in finger cookies and blood and pus type desserts; I have always wondered why we need humour to cover topics like these? Or more importantly why are we so ashamed to admit we suffer from problems like this? We have all seen embarrassing bodies right? For me this is probably the best thing to happen to medical programming since…well ever. A medical program actually telling us it is fine to have abnormalities with your body.



I am bringing this up (as disgusting as some of you might think it is, yes this a food blog but I want to talk about REAL topics here); is that please do not point out someone has a mangy toe or weird ass rash on their body. Especially if you the person who you are out on a date with. My love life is horrendous to say the least but a few weeks ago I went out on date; yes a real boy/girl date. Unfortunately at the time it was 30 degrees in Sydney and the unfortunate placement of a rash on my leg; I had to wear shorts in order for it “breathe” and not get worse.

So you can only guess what happen next. It became the topic of the day between me and this guy;

“How did you get it?”

“What is it?”

“Can you catch it?”


Seriously? This is way you woo a girl?


Argh boys.

Maybe it is because my blood boils over all too easily during exam but I have been craving ice cream ever since I started Uni. I never used to be an ice cream before I started University. Maybe it was because of an ice cream dish I tasted on my first University date. Yes with a boy even though it was a terrible date (lots of awkward silences and weird topics); however the ice cream was memorable. It was base of vanilla buttermilk ice cream on a chocolate Belgium waffle with a coco pop crunch topping.



Seriously amazing, crunchy, cold and sweet. While I am still working to re-create that at home, I think I have found essential buttermilk base ice cream. Working off smitten kitchen’s adaption of a Claudia Fleming’s butter milk ice cream and mixing it with Jeni’s ice cream formula, you get a tangy and creamy ice cream. Also the vanilla is more of a butter scotch flavour which is always good in my books (no boiling caramel here!)


At least if any more dates go bad, I still have ice cream. Whether you feel like a kid or adult, everyone will love a batch of butter cream ice cream. Sorry had to do the sprinkles.




Essential recipes; Butter milk ice cream

Adapted from Jeni’s ice cream base and Smitten kitchen’s adaptation


600ml buttermilk

450ml cream

2 tsp Vanilla extract

180g caster sugar

30g glucose

3g sea salt flakes

12g corn flour

40g cream cheese




In small bowl combine corn four and 60 ml milk to form a flour slurry. Set aside.

in a medium/ large sauce pan bring to boil all the butter milk, glucose, sugar, salt and cream.

Cook for 4 minutes while stirring continuously, Add the flour slurry while stirring. Cook for a further 2 minutes.

Place cream cheese in medium/large bowl and whisk in 60ml of the hot milk mix. Pour remaining milk mix into the cream cheese bowl while whisking.

Place mix in a sealed container in the fridge for 1 day before churning to your ice cream makers instructions. Just before churning add vanilla extract.

Chill ice cream for 4 hours before serving.

Serving ideas : Sprinkles and cookies for kids, grated salted dark chocolate, grated truffle, dark cocoa wafers etc.