I’m not really one to share those recipes that pop up on my Facebook feed. I have more efficient (for me) ways of finding/storing them so I tend to ignore them most of the time. This one, however, I decided that I had to try for scientific reasons. With so many ice creams languishing in our freezer (it’s been too cold a winter to want to indulge), I figured this would be a good way to use some of them up. And it’s kind of a neat idea.
So this is what you do: Take 2 cups of your ice cream of choice, and plop those in a bowl. I used a combo of cookies ‘n’ cream and cherry.
Let that melt (or put it in the microwave and melt it).
Preheat your oven to 350°F and grease and flour a standard loaf pan. I used parchment on mine.
Now you need some self-rising flour. If you don’t have any, you can make some: just mix 3/4 cup all-purpose flour with 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1 tablespoon baking powder. Add 1 1/2 cups self-rising flour (so double that wee DIY recipe for the self-rising) to your ice cream mixture and stir until just combined.
Smooth the batter into your loaf pan and bake for about 35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
I’d thought it would rise up more, but oh well.
Because it’s not a cake — it’s a bread — we found it was a lovely dessert bread spread with Nutella. Give it a try!
Whilst cleaning out the freezer the other day, I noticed I still had about a cup of frozen partridgeberries from an age ago waiting to be used. And seeing as I had a carton of whipping cream in the fridge and I hadn’t yet packed my ice cream maker, my next step just made sense: ICE CREAM!
I love home-made ice cream because of its simplicity. This recipe has five ingredients and they are all awesome.
Start with your partridgeberries, or, if you’re from the Rock, you’re gonna call them “par’hridgeberries” (because “t” doesn’t really exist here). I had about 1 cup frozen partridgeberries*, to which I added 1 cup frozen blueberries.
Chuck those in a pot with 1-2 cups granulated sugar (your preference as to how sweet you want it to be, but you also want enough sugar that the resulting sauce is thick and gooey). Heat your berries until thawed and juicy, then bring them to a boil quickly and remove them from the heat. Let them cool for a bit.
In a bowl, dump 2 cups whipping cream and a hefty dollop of vanilla extract.
Stir in your cooled berry sauce, then cover the bowl and chuck it in the fridge overnight.
While you’re at it, make sure to freeze the interior liner of your ice cream maker, if you have a non-electric one.
On day two, pour your berry goo into your ice cream maker and have at ‘er according to your machine’s instructions.
Chuck your newly minted ice cream into the freezer until completely solid, and then serve!
I love the purple/blue/red colour combination here, as well as the sweetness of the blueberries contrasted with the tartness of the partridgeberries. We served this as a side dish to the Pie’s birthday cake.
*If you can’t find partridgeberries in your geographical area, they might be called lingonberries or cowberries, or some other wacky local name.
No? You probably should. It’s like all the good things about ice cream, but it’s also gluten-free, vegan, and pretty darned good for you. I feel like world peace could be achieved if everyone could have some of this ice cream (except for people who are allergic to bananas — they will just have to negotiate peace on their own terms).
So basically, you take some bananas. Ripe ones, with a few brown spots. You want them soft and squishy and very sweet.
Then you peel them and slice them into disks. And then you freeze those. In the freezer. Or outside, if you live in Central or Eastern or Atlantic Canada. Or Northern Europe. Or Siberia. Or Antarctica (actually, then they’d probably be too cold. Your freezer is probably warmer than Antarctica).
Then you take them out of the freezer. And you plop them in your food processor.
AND YOU GIVE IT A WHAZ. Which is what Jamie Oliver would say. And the Pie and I love him, so that’s one of our new favourite phrases.
And when it’s all gooey and soft and smooth, you can eat it!
If you prefer your soft serve a little more firm, you can chuck it back in the freezer for a bit. I like the fact that when it thaws, because it’s banana, it doesn’t get all soupy.
And you can flavour it as well! Add peanut butter, Nutella, chocolate chips, cocoa, vanilla … you name it (I added Nutella and vanilla).
The only limit is your imagination — and what you have to stuff in there. GO BANANAS!
I don’t know if you know this, but the original plan, eight years ago now, was that Stef and I were going to set up Cait with the Pie. They’re both complete computer nerds, skinny jerks, and their birthdays are only four days apart. What could possibly go wrong? Needless to say, it didn’t happen, to everyone’s relief. Anyway, today Cait turns thirty, and I’m pleased to say that now we have been friends for over half our lives. Pretty heady stuff when you’re a girl who rarely stayed in one place longer than five years growing up.
In continuing the birthday theme, I am going to give you the recipe for the chocolate fudge ice cream you saw in the Pie’s ice cream birthday cake on Monday.
I took this recipe (and modified it only a tiny bit) from My Lemony Kitchen, and I think it’s tops, even though I am not particularly fond of chocolate ice cream. It is, however, a very British recipe, and everything is in metric, including the measurements for a substance known as GOLDEN SYRUP. Fortunately in Newfoundland, where we love everything British, this was easy to find. This partially inverted refiners syruptastes kind of like molasses, and kind of like corn syrup.
It’s extremely sweet. And good for serving with “sweet puds.” Can any of my UK readers tell me what exactly a PUD is? I am on tenterhooks to know.
This is where your handy dandy kitchen scale is very useful. If you don’t have one, you should get one. They are always worth it.
So. Ice cream. In a pot with a heavy base, pour 300mL whole milk.
Chop up 100g dark chocolate and scoop up 25g butter and add those to the mix.
Heat on medium, stirring often, until everything is melted and smooth.
Measure out 125g sugar and 75g golden syrup. I weighed the syrup on top of the sugar, so that the whole thing just slid into the pot and I wasn’t left with a sticky mess. Clever, eh?
Add the sugars to the pot and raise the heat to bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat and allow to simmer for about four minutes. Then remove the whole thing from the heat and allow it to cool until it’s just warm.
In a mixing bowl, beat up 4 eggs. Slowly, stirring the whole time, pour the slightly warm chocolate mixture into the eggs.
Strain this whole thing into a heatproof bowl or the top of a double-boiler. You may need to scrape the bottom of the strainer occasionally, as the egg whites are quite membranous.
Plop the bowl full of chocolate onto a pot of barely simmering water and cook until it thickens and coats the back of your spoon. Now you have custard.
Something caught fire under my burner at this point, but I like to believe that the delicious smoky taste to my chocolate ice cream was not accidental.
Remove the chocolate custard from the heat and stir in 300mL heavy or whipping cream.
I also added in a few tablespoons of crème de cacao as a softener. You’ll note that the packing tape was still on the lid from when we moved in four years ago. It’s not a popular liqueur in this house.
Allow your mixture to cool completely and store it in the fridge overnight.
Then churn it in your ice cream maker according to the machine’s instructions and then do with it what you will.
I smoothed mine into an ice cream cake but I bet it would be great by itself, or maybe with some fudge sauce …
I will let you in on the worst-kept secret in our family: Saturday was the Pie’s thirtieth birthday. He’s finally as old as me and will (hopefully) shut up about my aging process.
The Pie’s birth flower is the delphinium. That peony just happened to be there.
Now, for me, being born the week before March Break, as a child I often celebrated more than one birthday. There was my actual birthday, then there was one when my grandparents came to visit the following week, and then maybe one with my friends from school. Through no fault of my own, this happened consistently through to my adulthood, just little low-key celebrations dotting a week of aging, with maybe a cake at the end of it. For the Pie it’s a bit different. Because he was born in the summer, all of his friends were out of school and so he generally had one big bash to celebrate his big day. Needless to say, since we became broke and moved to Newfoundland, his expectations have taken a hit. Fortunately, Papa John and Mrs. Nice are in town, so we can make it a bit of a party.
One of his “big boy” gifts: a sweatshirt designed to look like Optimus Prime. If you zip the hood all the way up it forms Prime’s large blue head, with mesh eyeholes. It wouldn’t zip over the Pie’s rather prominent nose.
As a rule (because we’re broke), we don’t exchange gifts, but on our birthdays, the other makes the celebrant a cake. Last year, I made the Pie that disastrous leaning tower of chocolate. This year I thought I would try for something a little more refreshing, given that it is summer, after all: ice cream cake! Having watched several of the bloggers I read try and fail at this feat last summer (Caroline, I’m thinking of you!), I think I know what NOT to do, so here goes …
Start with a springform pan. The fact that you can dismantle it means that getting the cake out when you’re done won’t be that hard.
Now you need some ice cream flavours. One of our favourite restaurants in St. John’s, Get Stuffed, used to have this boozy ice cream cake, where the three layers of ice cream were flavoured with various liqueurs. It. Was. Fabulous. So I’m going to try to recreate that, but with a little less booze. Just a little less.
I’m using ice creams I made from scratch, but you can use store-bought ice cream that has been softened. The first layer, at the top of the cake, is raspberry (you can see the recipe here, though this time I used cognac instead of vinegar!). Simply spoon 2 or 3 cups of softened ice cream into the bottom of the pan and smooth it out. In retrospect, I should have frozen the empty pan before plopping the ice cream in it, because just-churned ice cream on a hot day has a habit of melting, and this seeped through the edges of the pan a bit before it re-froze. No big deal, just something to remember for next time.
You might also want to scrape down the sides a bit, just so residual ice cream doesn’t interfere with the look of the following layer.
This cake took a couple of days to make, because each ice cream mixture needs to sit in the fridge overnight before you churn and freeze it, but that gave each layer ample time to get nice and solid before I added the next one.
The middle layer is vanilla, and the Pie loves his vanilla ice cream, so I used the best recipe possible.
Because the pan was frozen and the ice cream underneath was frozen, it was an easy job to smooth on this layer.
Then a chocolate layer. Neither the Pie nor I are particularly fond of chocolate ice cream, but I have never seen an ice cream cake, especially one with a fudge layer, without it, so it had to go in.
You will be able to see the recipe here on Wednesday.
So, with that all frozen, I could work on my chocolate fudge layer, which, in my opinion, was always the best part of the store-bought ice cream cake. Fudge sauce recipes abound on the internet, but I was looking for something with a bit of substance, something that would take well to freezing, and this one from The Foodess seemed perfect. She even said it went well in ice cream cakes.
Making it was super easy, too, which I like. I did it on the stove, but The Foodess recommends working with the microwave, so that should tell you how easy it is.
In a small saucepan with a thick bottom, pour 3/4 cup granulated sugar, 1/2 cup powdered cocoa, and 1/2 cup heavy cream or milk (I used homogenized milk here).
Heat, stirring often, until the sugar dissolves, and bring the mixture to a boil, all of which should take about 3 minutes.
Add in 4 tablespoons butter and cook for another few minutes, stirring occasionally, until the mixture thickens. You might want to turn the heat down a little bit, so that the sauce doesn’t burn.
Remove the sauce from the heat, add in 1 teaspoon vanilla and a pinch of salt and you’re all done. Wasn’t that easy?
Let that cool before smoothing it onto your final ice cream layer. Mine was in the fridge overnight and so I just stuck it in the microwave for a minute to soften it up a bit.
It slathered onto the frozen chocolate layer quite nicely.
Then you want a crumb crust. You can use Oreo crumbs, but I also had some leftover pieces from some particularly crumbly gluten-free brownies that were in the freezer, so I pulsed them in the food processor and used them instead, which meant that everything in the cake was made from scratch (you gotta put in the extra effort sometimes).
As an aside, I also broke my mini food processor doing this — not because of the density of the brownies, but through my own mishandling of the situation. Alas.
Smooth the crumbs over the fudge layer.
Right to the edge. Yes, I licked the fudge off my finger later.
Press that stuff down and re-freeze for a couple of hours.
To serve, run a bit of hot water around the edges of the springform pan and release the cake, flipping it upside down onto a plate (make sure it’s a plate with a lip, otherwise the cake will dribble everywhere as it melts).
I used an icing scraper to texturize the sides and scrape away dribbles from other flavours that ruined the effect.
Then I used a fondant smoother to get rid of the weird melty marks on the top.
You can decorate it any way you want, but the Pie is a huge Street Fighter fan and he plays the character of Hakan, a Turkish oil wrestler. So I bought some teal and white icing from Sobeys and put a stylized version of his face on the cake, as his skin is almost the same colour as the raspberry ice cream (okay so now not everything is made from scratch. Sue me).
Cover the cake with plastic wrap or seal in a container and store in the freezer when you’re not eating it.
I may have told you this already, but a while back my parents took a road trip down to Louisiana with the specific goal of visiting the Avery Island Tabasco factory. As a result all their family and friends received a plethora of Tabasco-related gifts.
I’ve had saffron ice cream. Black bean ice cream. Taro ice cream. Hemp ice cream. Even wasabi ice cream. So this can’t be too weird, right? Granted, I didn’t really ENJOY any of those (well the saffron was pretty good), but I’m always willing to try something new. The Pie, not so much.
It’s a mix, so I can’t really give you the recipe here (because I don’t know it), but it involves milk, cream, the mix, and Tabasco’s Sweet & Spicy Sauce (which we also received as a present).
So here goes.
The mix is revealed to be sugar, vanilla, and xanthan gum. So nothing too scary. Sweetener, flavour, and thickener. Fine.
Put that in a bowl, add the cream. Whisk.
Add in the sweet and spicy sauce. Whisk.
In the ice cream maker, it reveals itself to be a lovely pale peach colour.
And it actually froze up pretty quickly. You are supposed to put it back in the container in which the mix came, but ours didn’t fit.
The verdict? The Pie, Fussellette, and I all tried it, and as Fussellette says, “It tastes like stir-fry.” So if you like that, I recommend this stuff. If you’d prefer your ice cream to be a little more traditional, you might want to leave this on the shelf. I wonder if there’s anyway this could be saved. Any suggestions?
This was dessert when Fussellette came to dinner last week.
Started first with a meringue (my recipe is from The Joy of Cooking, but you can see a chocolate version here).
We plopped on the meringue some raspberry ice cream (see post here, but minus the vinegar). Then we topped it with whipped cream, melted chocolate, and fresh blackberries. Sweet and simple.
She was sitting in the MUGS room with the Pie, talking about, of all things, pie (we don’t call him that because he’s sweet and flaky, after all). They were discussing the merits of ice cream versus whipped cream as a topping.
Fussellette, a native Newfoundlander, mentioned that growing up, she had always had Fussell’s on her pies and desserts.
The Pie’s first reaction was along the lines of, “what on earth are you talking about? Fussell’s?”
I’ve never heard of it either. So Fussellette bought us some.
Apparently it’s a sterilized thick cream in a can, a Newfoundland staple. Ostensibly it’s from the Golden Butterfly Brand, but on the back you can see it’s distributed by Smucker’s, which is part of Nestlé. Globalization …
It’s rather clotted and yellowish, but tastes just like what it is, thickened cream.
So there are these Oreo cookies, limited edition. Cookies and cream. In a cookie. With cream.
Cookies and cream is, on its own, a popular ice cream flavour, and by extension, a good milkshake. Because it’s cookies. In cream. In fact, as you can see, the picture on the front of the Oreo package is of a cookies and cream cookie in a cookies and cream milkshake. My mind was slightly blown.
So we of course made milkshakes with our cookies and cream cookies. We would have used cookies and cream ice cream as well but we thought that might be pushing it.
Basic formula: take about 4 cookies per milkshake and crush them up in a food processor.
Crush them into crumbs.
Plop as much ice cream as will fit into the cup into which you will be putting your finished product.
Fill the rest up with milk.
Pour that stuff into a blender, together with your crumbs.
Blend and pour.
Enjoy your cookies and cream cookies with cream in a meta manner.
This simple, zesty cobbler has a hint of citrus that takes it from ordinary to extraordinary, and is wicked easy to make. The recipe, taken from the O Magazine Cookbook, calls for orange zest, but I substituted it for lime, because that’s what I had on hand.
I also used flash-frozen cranberries instead of fresh, and they worked out just fine.
Preheat your oven to 350°F.
In a large bowl, beat together 6 tablespoons softened butter and 1/2 cup granulated sugar until smooth and creamy.
Beat in 2 eggs, one at a time, until well blended.
Add in 1 teaspoon freshly grated orange (or lime) zest and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
Add in 1 cup all-purpose flour and 1 teaspoon baking powder and beat until fully blended.
Set that aside for a wee bit.
In a 2-quart shallow glass or ceramic baking dish, pour in 6 cups cranberries.
Sprinkle 1 teaspoon orange zest (or lime zest) on top. Give it a bit of a stir.
Spread over this 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar and 1 cup cranberry juice.
Spoon the topping batter over the cranberry mixture by heaping spoonfuls.
Feel free to spread it and flatten it a bit if you like.
Bake for 40-60 minutes (depending on your oven), or until the filling is bubbly around the edges and the topping is brown. Cool completely on a wire rack.
Serve warm or at room temperature with whipped or ice cream.
Ali Does It Herself 