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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Double Prawn Cocktail Sandwich

Once upon a time, prawn cocktail was considered the king of sandwich fillings. Prawn cocktail sandwiches took pride of place on buffet tables, M&S chiller cabinets, and - I imagine - eighties power lunches.

This is not the case any more. The noble prawn sandwich struggles to compete against today's offerings of jamón serrano and manchego cheese on artisan sourdough, let alone hay-baked swan thigh with foraged woodland herbs and owl's egg mayo on freshly baked pain de campagne. More often than not, you can find a prawn cocktail sandwich, limp and soggy, reduced to 50p in Boots at 7:45pm.

But I have never lost faith in the prawn cocktail sandwich, and I think I've found a great way to boost its fortunes. I bring you the double prawn cocktail sandwich. Containing prawn cocktail AND prawn cocktail crisps.

Of course, I had to taste a few crisps first, just to check they were up to the high JerryFishbiscuits standards. When the time came to assemble the sandwich, I found that a layer of green stuff was necessary to prevent the crisps from getting soggy (creating "food barriers" is a complex subject which has been touched upon by Mr Noodles here). I wouldn't want anyone thinking that I was going all health conscious.

 

I honestly believe that the 'Double Prawn Cocktail' could become my new sandwich of choice.

 

Furthermore, I think many other sandwiches could benefit from the addition of crisps. I'm thinking cheese and pickle sandwiches with a layer of cheese and onion crisps. Or BLT with a layer of smoky bacon crisps. So many possibilities...

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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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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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