Another dessert invented by Escoffier, also with a musical theme, is Pear Helene (Poire Belle Helene). The inspiration came from the 1864 operetta of the same name, by Offenbach.
A favourite dessert in our family, it’s simple and delicious. All it takes is some poached pears (you can use canned ones to make it dead easy, although I wouldn’t during the summer season), vanilla ice cream, and warmed chocolate sauce. That’s it.
It’s a treat I remember from my childhood (and I can thank my parents for lavishing such things on us as youngsters – resulting, perhaps, in my chronic sweet tooth).
I haven’t had it for ages, but leaving my parents house a few days ago, I noticed that their pear tree was full of pears, and that was enough for me to go poaching.
I used a sugar syrup (a ratio of about 1:10 – sugar to water), and only poached them enough to soften them slightly (about 5 minutes).
I don’t especially like over-cooked fruit, but raw pears are not as luxurious in this dessert. It’s a bit of a balance, though, for soggy pears are not very appealing either…
There’s little assembly required – a bit of ice cream, some warm chocolate sauce liberally dribbled on top, and the spoon is ready for work.
I have seen this dessert presented as whole poached pears resting on a lake of chocolate with the ice cream adjoining them, and that has quite a dramatic effect!
Technorati tags: pear, Helene, chocolate, sauce, vanilla, ice cream
At the suggestion of one of our good customers, I played around a bit with 
1. Peel and cut up some fresh, ripe peaches (allow a full peach per person), drop them into boiling water with a few tablespoons of sugar and leave for two or three minutes (I don’t like to give them an over-cooked taste). Strain and allow to cool.
Dingle has hardly been left out of the growing boom in 
On top of everything converging on this busy time in the world of ice cream, Conor, my brother’s son, suffered a compound fracture of the arm, just above the elbow. He jumped over a rose bush, landed on a soccer ball, and met the waiting concrete below. The poor fellow spent the night in traction, had an operation in the morning, but is now recovering well. We’ve been feeding him ice cream. It’s great medicine!
Being an incorrigable chocoholic, it’s hard for me to ever admit that there is such a thing as too much chocolate (especially since one of my favourite things that we serve in the shop is the Warning! Dangerous Chocolate – shown above). It’s chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, chocolate sauce, chocolate shavings and a bit of cream drowned in chocolate.
My brother-in-law Paul brought me a bottle of rum back from Nicaragua, where he was touring with an orchestra, playing his horn. So I made some of it into a frozen strawberry banana daiquiri.
Kieran’s Frozen Strawberry Banana Daiquiri
2. Transfer to a sauce pan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly.
We’re always tinkering with new flavours here, and above are four that the production team recently sent into the 
In the midst of all the summer madness, we’ve had a sad development at Ice cream Ireland. My brother-in-law, visiting from Germany, accidentally threw my