I was recently fortunate enough to spend a week in Cornwall. My Mum tells me we went there occasionally when I was a little kid, but I don’t remember it. She also tells me that one morning I cycled round the garden on my tricycle picking up crusts left out for the birds and eating them.

Don’t worry, I wasn’t undernourished. Probably just fancied a quick snack on the go…

Anyway before H and I went, I had naturally done some food research and generated a list of ice-cream producers whose wares I wanted to try.

In the end we only managed a few (unfriendly weather conditions in the latter part of the week led to us bunkering down somewhat), but they were all good so I wanted to share them with you.

The first we had, and probably the kookiest, was Jelbert’s in Newlyn (on New Road). I picture gastronomes saying “It was this tiny little place, darling, and they only sold vanilla ice-cream! Can you believe it? And all there was to go on top was a Flake or clotted cream! I know! On ice-cream! It was just daaaaaaarling.”

That is probably mean to gastronomes. It was a small shop that sold sweets and vanilla ice-cream. Of course I opted for Flake and clotted cream on my portion.

The ice-cream was very light. Almost sorbet-like in its delicacy. The clotted cream was thick and quite chewy in texture where the ice-cream cooled it. While I won’t be racing to dollop cream on top of ice-cream in the future, there was something strangely pleasing about the combination. H was quite jealous that he hadn’t opted for cream too.

The next ice-cream we tried was a few days later at a Moomaid of Zennor Ice Cream parlour in St Ives.

After mulling over the many different flavours we opted for a scoop of blackberry yoghurt ice-cream and one of dark chocolate sorbet.

I am a sucker for dark chocolate sorbet (see Chocolate & Zucchini for a version of a David Leibovitz recipe). This was a very enjoyable one with an intense cocoa flavour, like eating a dark chocolate truffle. The blackberry yoghurt ice-cream had a fresh fruity taste with a good zing.

Our final ice-cream experience was courtesy of a very brief stop in Padstow. We had intended to stay longer, but the pouring rain and masses of people encouraged us to head elsewhere. We nipped into a Roskilly’s outlet by the harbour as we left, and got another two scoop tub, this time of raspberry and gooseberry yoghurt ice-creams.

The gooseberry was my favourite, with a wonderful tartness that the raspberry lacked. I think gooseberries make a great ice-cream, and wish it was more readily available elsewhere.

I definitely love ice-cream a little bit more than I used to, although it will probably be a while before I get to enjoy it in Cornwall again.