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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Toasties Episode 2 - The Desserts

The more I thought about toasted sandwiches, the more combinations I realised were possible. In fact, perhaps the £5 toasted sandwich maker is the only cooking equipment you really need to own!

Here are three dessert ideas - whether you're an impoverished student, a brave food adventurer, or just a twisted wierdo like me.

Apple Pie

My first dessert toastie was apple pie themed. Apple sauce and slices of apple, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.

As an experiment, I removed the sandwich halfway through cooking, coated it with butter and sugar, and put it back in the toasting device. This created a rather pleasing sticky coating. It almost ruined the sandwich toaster, but I think it was worth it.

The first dessert sandwich was a resounding success.


Double Decker

I was wondering whether a two-layer toastie would be practical, and if so, what fillings I should use. Well, how about a double decker toastie - based on the chocolate bar of the same name?

Marshmallow fluff on the bottom (in lieu of nougat), chocolate and coco pops on the top layer, and an extra slice of bread in between.

OK, so the photos are a little blurry... I'd had a couple of drinks at this point. To be honest you need a little sharpener before tackling something like this. But I'm pleased to say that the twin layer toastie actually worked pretty well!

Hmmmm. Delicious!


Treacle Tart

I'm sure everyone knows that treacle tart filling is not made from treacle at all - it's made from golden syrup and breadcrumbs. Luckily I had a lot of spare bread lying around...

After making the breadcrumbs in a blender, I mixed in the syrup, and proceeded to make the sandwich.

Just for fun, I turned the sandwich round halfway through cooking, to create four small triangles instead of the standard pattern. And I must say, it turned out pretty well. And it went down a treat with a scoop of ice cream.

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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 #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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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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