I was excited when Vanessa, who is in the process of writing a very exciting sounding cookery book called Prepped!, was looking for recipe testers. She has enlisted the help of many food bloggers to test out the recipes for her new book and report back how they went.

The beauty of all the recipes is that they are linked with each other so when you are making one recipe, it has elements that can be used in another. This is great for those of us who don’t have a great deal of time on our hands but love to cook. I was sent a vanilla and rhubarb ice cream recipe to test, which starts off as a vanilla custard – great for pouring over your crumbles and steamed puds, and the remainder gets used up to make ice cream. Two dishes for the price of one! How great is that?

I have to admit, this was only the second time that I’ve made custard from scratch and I’d never made ice cream before! It’s one of those things that I’ve always thought was really difficult and not worth the effort. However, it really was worth the effort and in fact, it wasn’t even that much effort!

I think I was over cautious with the heat as I’d heard horror stories about custard turning into scrambled eggs, so the recipe took me longer than stated! I’m definitely going to try it again and be a little bolder. The rhubarb added a delicious tangy but sweet flavour – even the hubby enjoyed it, and he’s not a big fan of rhubarb. Can’t wait to see the rest of Vanessa’s recipes when the book is out in May.