Retro Biscuit Ice Cream #5 - Pink Wafer Sandwich

Pink wafer.

Pink.
Wafer.

Not a particularly masculine pair of words, I'm sure you'll agree. However, my latest creation involves something akin to "building", so I guess I can reclaim a modicum of manliness there. The plan was to create a sort of giant pink wafer, with vanilla ice cream in the middle. Side walls built out of actual pink wafer biscuits, and the top and bottom out of rectangular ice cream wafers.

The first thing to figure out was how to dye the large wafers pink, to create the top and bottom layers of the wafer sandwich. My first idea was to soak them in a solution of red food colouring, then dry them out in the oven. However, they emerged from the oven rather crinkly and deformed - this technique was clearly not going to work. The second approach involved "painting" them with a stronger solution, followed by a brief blast in the oven.

Although not the perfect colour, at least I now had something I could work with. Now it was time to build the wafer construction which would house the ice cream. I cut the pink wafers in half lengthways, to create thin strips to use for the walls. Then, casting my memory back to an earlier creation, I remembered that melted chocolate and marshmallow fluff was possibly the stickiest substance known to man... this would be a perfect glue for sticking all these wafers together!

I filled the structure to the brim with almost-frozen ice cream, and then stuck on the wafer "lid" with more of the gluey mixture.

After tidying up the surplus glue which had started to ooze out, I put the whole thing in the freezer, and after a couple of hours it was ready to eat! It was the perfect size to cut in half and share with someone special. But I ate it all myself.

The sunny weather may be coming to and end, but there's never a bad time for ice cream.

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Retro Biscuit Ice Cream #4 - "Viscount"

Welcome to the latest post in the Retro Biscuit Ice Cream series! Luckily the weather's been absolutely scorchio recently, perfect conditions for enjoying your favourite biscuits in a delicious ice cream format!

As well as creating another instalment in the series, I'm fulfilling two promises with this post. Firstly by satisfying my friend's request to see a "Viscount" style ice cream. And Secondly, by entering for the latest Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream challenge, something I've been meaning to do for some while now. The latest challenge is for herb based ice creams - but more on that later. I do like to try different things out (you could even say I was "adventurous" in my own way), and I've already made ice cream from a custard base. I've also used the condensed milk method, and I've even used Angel Delight ice cream mix (it actually does turn out better than you'd think!). So for my latest retro biscuit ice cream, I'm making frozen yoghurt!

The Viscount was a fine biscuit indeed, with a layer of creamy minty stuff and a milk chocolate coating. I haven't seen it in a few years, in fact I was certain it had been discontinued... but apparently, despite attempts to re-launch it in the "luxury" market, it can often be found in Iceland and pound shops! I suppose I could make a return visit to Iceland in the name of research, but I really don't feel quite ready for that yet. So I'm recreating the noble Viscount in ice cream (sorry... frozen yoghurt) form entirely from memory. I started with a recipe for mint chop chip frozen yoghurt which I found online. The base of this recipe is a frozen yoghurt made with fresh mint (aha!), so I made a syrup with a handful of mint leaves and a ton of sugar. Once the syrup had cooled down, I strained it and whisked it into some greek yoghurt, along with a little buttermilk. I was intrigued to see that the recipe stated that green food colouring was optional... should I leave it off-white as per the Viscount minty filling, or go green in keeping with the colour of the Viscount wrapper (and traditional mint-choc-chip style)? Of course, it had to be green!!

I couldn't be bothered to use the ice cream machine, so I decided to just bung it in the freezer and give it a damn good stir every half hour or so. While it was freezing, I broke up some biscuit (shortcake and digestive) pieces and some milk chocolate chunks, ready to stir into the yoghurt once it was almost set.

But I suddenly had a last minute brainwave. I remembered the box of After Eight mints we had in the dining room. Somebody had bought them round a while ago, and they had been sitting there ever since (the mints, not the person).

I know what you're thinking. It's not 1981 any more. Who, for the love of god, brings After Eights with them when they're invited for dinner? We have strange friends. But that's another story - the point is that this was a perfect way to acheive an extra level of minty chocolatey tastiness. I mashed them up and stuck them in the microwave for a bit, and stirred the brown minty goo into the frozen yoghurt along with the biscuit and milk chocolate chunks.

It may look a little messy, but the Viscount-themed 'fro-yo' was pretty good! Admittedly the combination of the mint syrup and the melted After Eights resulted in severe mint overload, but I decided this was probably a good thing.

 

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Retro Biscuit Ice Cream #3 - "Orange Club"

I'm not really a 'social media' type of fellow. I supposed I'm just too busy coming up with ridiculous dishes to spend time engaging with the twitterati. But when my PR representative took to Twitter to ask my numerous fans what retro biscuit they'd like to see turned into an ice cream, I was deluged with responses. While I'd love to make all of them, it would take me literally most of the morning. So I've just picked one for now - the orange Club.

I've always liked Clubs, the layer of chocolate was pleasingly plentiful, and the biscuit was satisfyingly crisp. They now come in four flavours - milk chocolate, fruit (raisin), orange, and mint. But back in the day, there was also a plain chocolate variety with a golf ball on the wrapper. Now why, I ask you, would they put a bloody golf ball on the packet? What's all that about?

Anyway, for the orange club ice cream, I decided that the best approach would be to make two separate ice creams - chocolate and orange - and sort of swirl them together with biscuit chunks. I'd recently read about a way of making ice cream by simply whipping up double cream with condensed milk and putting in the freezer, so I decided to use that approach for this project.

For the chocolate ice cream, I melted some milk chocolate with a bit of cream, and then when it had cooled, whipped it up with some more cream and some condensed milk.

For the orange ice cream, I added some orange rind and a little marmalade to the cream / condensed milk mixture, and whipped it up in the same way. I put alternate spoonfuls of the two ice creams into a plastic tub along with pieces of shortcake, mixed it about a bit, and put it into the freezer overnight.

It looked a mess in the tub, but actually looked pretty damn good when served in scoops. In honour of the Club's thick chocolate coating, what better way to serve this than with a topping of my home made chocolate orange 'Ice Magic'?

I'm not 100% sold on the cream and condensed milk method of making ice cream, though. The texture didn't seem quite right - not rich and dense like a custard ice cream, nor did it resemble a soft-scoop ice cream. It was a litte bit... crumbly. Maybe a fancy restaurant would call it an "iced parfait" or something. It still tasted pretty good thanks to the awesome flavour combination, but I reckon there are better ways of making ice cream!

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Retro Biscuit Ice Cream #2 - Jamboree (Jam Mallow)

This post started life as Jammy Dodger ice cream, but while vanilla ice cream with bits of biscuit and jam sounded OK in theory, in practise it just wasn't all that interesting. But luckily the project then morphed into something altogether more exciting and tasty.

I'm hoping most of you will recognise this:

I know them is Jamborees. Others may know them as Jam Mallows. And apparently in Ireland they are called Mikado (for some inexplicable reason). But the concept is the same - rectangular biscuits, covered in raspberry jam, pink marshmallow, and coconut.

While all the cool kids at school were sneaking off for a cigarette at lunch time, I have fond memories of popping down to the local shop to buy a packet of Jamborees, and promptly scoffing the whole lot. It's a mystery how I wasn't the fattest kid in school. But I digress... it's another classic biscuit that I haven't seen in years, so a perfect candidate for a retro biscuit ice cream.

For the previous entry in the series, I used Angel Delight ice cream mix as the base - and although I considered it a resounding success, this time I wanted proper ice cream... the dense, heavy, creamy stuff. But I'm not the sort of person to do things the hard way, so instead of making a custard base from scratch, I used a mixture of ready-made custard and double cream. It was then time to hijack my wife's favourite kitchen gadget - the ice cream attachment for the mixer.

She really hates it when I use her stuff, and she generally stands over me to make sure that I use it correctly, wash it thoroughly (and at the correct temperature), and then carefully dry it and put it away in the correct place. But it was worth the hassle, because the ice cream came out really well... rich, thick, and just generally the way ice cream should be. In fact, if you have an ice cream maker, I thoroughly recommend the shop-bought custard method.

To make the pink marshmallow, I stirred a few drops of red food colouring into half a jar of marshmallow fluff. I then spooned out a few blobs of the stuff, and coated with coconut. Marshmallow fluff is one of the stickiest substances known to man, and it seems to get everywhere, but eventually I had ten or so nice lumps of coconut coated pink goo.

I took some bog standard shortcake biscuits, broke them into small pieces, and stirred them into the ice cream along with the marshmallow. Finally, I made a raspberry "sauce" from a handful of raspberries and some jam, stirred it into the ice cream, and put the whole lot in the freezer.

The result was another delicious biscuity success. And it tasted even better with some extra raspberry sauce and coconut sprinkled on top.

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Retro Biscuit Ice Cream #1 - "Wagon Wheel"

Welcome to the first post of my "Retro Biscuit Ice Cream" series, in which I plan to make ice cream based on various biscuity snacks of yesteryear. That may sound like the worst idea you've ever heard, and you may have a valid point - only time will tell.

Anyway, I thought I'd start with one of my absolute favourite childhood treats, the Wagon Wheel. According to Wikipedia they are still available, but I haven't personally seen one for at least 15 years, and they're very much something I associate with a bygone era (i.e. my youth). And speaking of food blasts-from-the-past, I had a special trick up my sleeve for making the ice cream. Remember Angel Delight? Well, I present to you... Angel Delight ice cream mix!

Yes that's right, a sachet of ice cream mix brought to you by those crazy cats at Angel Delight HQ. You just whisk it up with 150ml of milk until it dramatically increases in volume, and put it in the freezer. That's it. No ice cream maker, no removing from the freezer to stir every 15 minutes, none of that malarkey. It sounded too good to be true.

Now for the wagon wheel inspired additions. I needed biscuit, marshmallow, and chocolate. I decided to use digestives (probably my favourite out of all the "bog-standard" biscuits), so I broke up a whole load of them and stirred them into the mixture, along with a few lumps of milk chocolate for good measure. For the marshmallow, several big lumps of my old friend, Marshmallow Fluff - half a jar's worth, in total.

Using the remainder of the finest quality chocolate, I made a chocolate sauce by microwaving it with a little bit of milk. I froze the ice cream for half an hour, and then stirred in the chocolate sauce before returning it to the freezer.

The ice cream is pretty light - as you'd expect from a tub of ice cream that was made from only 150ml (i.e a small glass) of milk. The texture is more reminiscent of a cheap old-school "soft scoop" ice cream, than a nice thick home-made one. But it does taste like ice cream, and is far from unpleasant... and the combination of biscuit pieces, marshmallow, and chocolate worked really well. In fact, I really think that someone should manufacture Wagon Wheel ice cream - they'd definitely have a loyal customer in the shape of Jerry Fishbiscuits.

If you have a favourite retro biscuit you'd like to see turned into an ice cream, leave a comment! (note, crap suggestions like rich tea or custard cream will not be tolerated).


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