Retro Biscuit Ice Cream - "Jaffa Cake"

What is it - a biscuit or a cake? You may recall that this very debate was at the centre of one of the most ludicrous legal battles in living memory. The reason being that in the UK, VAT is payable on chocolate covered biscuits, but not chocolate covered cake. (Perhaps the government think that chocolate cake is essential sustenance, while choccy biccies are an unnecessary luxury?)

It's not a clear-cut thing. The sponge layer is probably more cakey than biscuity, but the size and format are more biscuit-like. But either way, it seemed like a great candidate for another Retro Biscuit Ice Cream.

I was pretty impressed with the Angel Delight ice cream mix, so I decided to use it again for the Jaffa cake ice cream. The biggest unknown was the orangey bits - this was clearly going to be rather experimental. I considered several approaches, but eventually settled on using orange jelly. I made a rather more concentrated solution that the packet recommended, and as well as water, I used the juice of two oranges along with a couple of spoons of marmalade.

Sponge fingers seemed like the obvious choice to represent the firm-yet-spongy Jaffa cake base, and obviously I was going to need some chunks of dark chocolate.

I made up the ice cream mix, stirred in some blobs of jelly along with the sponge fingers and chocolate, and put the whole lot in the freezer.

Overall this was a pretty good effort. The sponge finger pieces had soaked up some of the ice cream, and tasted great as a result. The orange jelly was pretty interesting, and came out like pieces of slightly squidgy orange ice lolly.

The large pieces of sponge finger and orange jelly made it hard to scoop it out in an even shape, so there is certainly some room for improvement. But overall, a solid addition to the series.

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Doughnut Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding

So it turns out that Tesco do their very own clone of the classic Krispy Kreme glazed ring doughnut - and at four for £1.50, they are a fraction of the price of the real McCoy. Better still, you can sometimes pick them up at a knock-down price at the end of the evening before the store closes! And there was only one obvious thing to do with eight slightly stale glazed doughnuts...

I sliced each doughnut through the middle, then cut them in half, before laying the bottom pieces on the base of the dish. Then it was time to make the custard. I'm not really familiar with powdered custard, but I followed the instructions on the packet and whisked the powder into a jug of boiling water. The result looked pretty disgusting, kind of like pale yellow glue. So I added an egg yolk and a bit of milk into it... may as well have just made proper custard in the first place!

I didn't really want to go the traditional route of cinnamon and sultanas, I had greater plans for my pudding. I took a bar of milk chocolate and a bar of dark, and broke them into chunks. I scattered the chocolate liberally over base layer of doughnuts, before adding the custard, the top halves of the doughnuts, and a bit more custard on top. Then it all went into the oven.

After 10 minutes I took the pudding out of the oven, covered it in grated chocolate, and put it back in for another 15 minutes. And then it was done! The top had gone lovely and crispy, the sugary glaze on each doughnut blistering impressively in the heat of the oven.

Beneath the crispy top layer, the doughnuts and custard had combined into a deliciously rich and sickly goo, interspersed with plenty of melted chocolate. Strangely, I'd say that the texture was actually noticably lighter than a normal bread and butter pudding. In fact, it really did taste bloody delicious.

(serving suggestion)

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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 #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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Chocolate-Orange Ice Magic!

Bird's Ice Magic, simply put, is my favourite 80's ice cream topping. You'd squeeze it from it's conical bottle onto your ice cream of choice, at which point it would solidify into a hard chocolate shell. The available flavours were chocolate, mint, butterscotch, and best of all, orange.

The criteria for an authentic chocolate-orange Ice Magic replica are:

• remains liquid when cool
• sets hard when very cold
• tastes sickly sweet, but with a pleasing orange tang

A quick bit of research shows that a few other people have successfully met the first two criteria by mixing melted chocolate with coconut oil. But I had to get the orange flavour in there, and also make sure that the oil didn't dilute the sweetness of the chocolate. I decided that the solution was to infuse the oil with orange rind, and add a little syrup into the mixture too.

I put the rind of a large orange in a bowl with some coconut oil, and microwaved it on the lowest power for 20 minutes. The oil unsurprisingly turned an orange colour, and filled the kitchen with an amazing smell. I strained the oil, then stirred in some milk chocolate (left over Easter bunny) along with a small squeeze of chocolate syrup. I heated it for a few more seconds until the chocolate had melted, and then left it to cool.

I spooned it over some cold vanilla ice cream, and sure enough, within a few seconds it had set solid! Victory was mine!

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Celebrations Pie

Our corner of South London has it's very own baking club, known as Band Of Bakers. My wife has been a proud member since its inception, and often brings home all manner of tasty cakes and breads. They seem to take it all pretty seriously, and they even had a brief flirtation with fame, when teak-faced housewives' favourite Paul Hollywood visited them for one of his TV shows. Now, baking isn't really one of my strengths, but stuffing my face with cake certainly is - so I finally managed to gatecrash one of their meets last week. The only catch was that I had to bring something with me.

As this was to be their first anniversary, the theme was 'celebration'. I anticipated multi-tiered cakes, opera cakes, croquembouche, and all manner of extravagant creations. But I had a rather different interpretation of "celebration". Hence, the Celebrations Pie was born. A chocolate covered tart, consisting of three sections inspired by Mars, Snickers, and Bounty bars.

I started by making the pastry base - I'm no baker, so rolling out some shop bought sweet pastry into a tin is about as technical as I get. The packet promised "perfect pastry every time", which seemed optimistic, but it turned out about as well as I could hope for.

I then made the first filling - "Bounty" - by mixing dessicated coconut, condensed milk, and icing sugar. No cooking necessary, but it did need to be chilled in the fridge to solidify.

When it came to creating the malty "Mars" filling, I found plenty of recipes online for making fluffy nougat. But they were all way too technical, involving sugar thermometers, "hard ball stage", and all sorts of nonsense. My own version consisted of melted chocolate, half a jar of marshmallow fluff, and a couple of teaspoons of Horlicks.

I also used the marshmallow fluff for the Snickers filling, this time mixing it with melted white chocolate and roasted peanuts. I didn't think of it as cheating - just common sense.

Obviously the Mars and Snickers sections needed a caramel topping. I made this by taking another can of condensed milk with some glucose syrup and golden syrup, and sticking it in the microwave for a few minutes. Finally I topped the whole lot with melted milk chocolate, and it was ready to go.

So, how did the celebrations pie go down at the baking club birthday party? As predicted, there was a plethora of impressive cakes on display, and mine did look a bit sad in comparison. One person even mumbled "urgh, I'm not eating that", which I found pretty funny. But actually most people were very positive and encouraging, and generally kind towards the special kid in the class.

In fact, my creation was (almost) all gone at the end of the night -  but I did manage to rescue a slice of "Mars" to take home. I was fairly happy with it, but if I were to be critical, the Mars filling needed a stronger malty flavour, and the Snickers needed more peanuts - and maybe even a pinch of salt.

I went home happy, with a belly full of cake and booze, and a big box full of amazing cake. And if they'll have me back again, I may just have a few more tricks up my sleeve...


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