It's not hard to think of a pudding that can be made in advance. But mostly the advantage is simply that all the effort is upfront and early. The thing about this recipe is that you do it in advance – it's ice cream, so that stands to reason – but what you do in advance is negligible in terms of effort. You don't make a custard, and you don't have to keep whipping it out of the deep freeze to beat the crystals. No, you simply squeeze and stir.

On top of that cause for greater contentment, there is also the fact that this delicate pink ice cream tastes like fragrant, sherbety heaven.

Ingredients

• 2 pomegranates (plus seeds from a third for decoration, optional)
• 1 lime
• 175g icing sugar
• 500ml double cream

    
Preparation

1 Juice the pomegranates and the lime and strain the juices into a bowl.
2 Add the icing sugar and whisk to dissolve.
3 Whisk in the double cream and keep whisking until soft peaks form in the pale pink cream.
4 Spoon and smooth the ice cream into the airtight container of your choice and freeze for at least 4 hours, or overnight.
5 Scatter with some pomegranate seeds before you eat it.
    

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Excerpted from Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson. Copyright 2007 by Nigella Lawson. Excerpted by permission of Random House of Canada Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.