By Keighley’s Mike Armstrong, an award-winning master baker with a big passion for baking...

KNICKERBOCKER glory, what a magnificent name for an ice cream!

I've still not got over the fact that we were never allowed one on our annual holiday to Skegness. Too dear, at 2/6d, for two little boys, dad would say. Oddly enough, the following year mum had a bingo win and we were treated to a knickerbocker each at the ice cream parlour – with its colourful layers of tinned fruit cocktail and ice creams, crowned with a wafer and chocolate flake, drizzled with lots of raspberry sauce – and eaten with an extra-long spoon.

All this ice cream talk got me thinking about what else we used to buy from an ice cream van. Do you remember the long heatwave of 1976 and the ice cream van turning up playing Popeye the Sailor Man, Greensleeves or O Sole Mio – it was always a welcome sight outside our house during the severe drought. If it was a weekend we would run out quickly clutching a large glass bowl to be filled with 50p worth of ice cream. I don't know if it was cheaper to do this, but we did that back then.

The ice cream van was really common back in the seventies and it came in different shapes and sizes, with various names and bright colours. Did you know it's an offence to sound chimes before dinnertime or after seven at night?

My favourite ice cream had to be the screwballs – they had two balls of frozen bubble gum at the bottom of a plastic cone filled with ice cream that was always dyed red or blue at the bottom, and the spoon was just short of useless.

Back then every lolly you ate had a joke on the stick, and us boys used to put the sticks on our bike wheel spokes to make it sound like a Harley Davidson, or make lolly stick boomerangs.

In the seventies, there was an array of innovative and delightful ice lollies and ice creams to capture our imaginations and tastebuds, from a satisfying orange pyramid Jubbly to the Doctor Who-themed Death Ray and not forgetting the jubilee specials when everything turned red, white and blue. We also had rocket ice lollies, made popular by the moon landings, and who could forget the Fab lollies which tapped into popularity from Thunderbirds: yes who loved to say FAB? But it wasn't FAB on poor mum's purse!

RECIPE

KNICKERBOCKER GLORY

Makes 4

Ingredients:

8 shortbread biscuits

150ml/5fl oz strawberry or other fruit-based sauce

300g/10.5 oz good-quality ice cream

100g/3.5 oz fresh fruit in season

4 crushed walnuts, optional

4 chocolate flakes or waffles

Method:

1. Put 4 glasses in the freezer and leave them several hours so they get ice cold before using them.

2. Crush the shortbread biscuits in a sealed plastic bag with a rolling pin.

3. Put 2 tablespoons of sauce into the bottom of each glass, then place the shortbread biscuits on top to separate the liquid at the bottom from the other ingredients.

4. Add a layer of ice cream and then follow with alternating layers of fresh fruit, crushed shortbread, strawberry sauce and ice cream till the glasses are full.

5. Finish with crushed shortbread and walnuts and a few fresh berries.

6. Top each knickerbocker glory with a chocolate flake and serve straight away.