Friday afternoons are icecream time around here. Every second kid and their parents head to the lolly shops at 3.15 for something sweet and cold.

We've joined them in the past but it's become difficult to do now that my second child has been shown to have an allergy to cows milk. Vanilla icecream is just about his favourite thing in the world to eat, and now we've had to find alternatives. He doesn't like lemon sorbet and he won't touch soy icecream for some reason, so he's been very miserable the couple of times we've tried to go out for treats.

Today I felt so sorry for him that when we came home I pulled out the icecream maker and made him some dairy free, gluten free, soy free coconut/vanilla icecream. Not only was it a cooking success, but he also deemed it 'delicious' and came back for seconds.

Here's how it went down:

I whizzed 5 eggs, a cup of rice millk and a cup of sugar together, then put it in a saucepan over a low heat to make a custard called an 'anglaise'. This is the tricky bit. You can't let it get too hot and make the eggs cook in little lumps. It just has to thicken enough to cover the back of a wooden spoon.

Then I chilled it and added it to my icecream maker along with a can of coconut cream and let the machine do its thing. Voila! Dairy free, soy free and gluten free icecream that's high in protein for an extra bonus.

You could probably make it chocolate by adding in some cocoa in the custard stage, or fold in berries or fruit pulp, honeycomb, crushed macadamias or cookies (GF-CF of course.)