Macadamia Nut Fried Ice Cream

Before I begin, let me first say that e.j. has informed me that Stubs too made fried ice cream. In order to avoid being influenced by his post, I haven't read it. I think it's funny that I too considered making churros. I guess we're on the same wave length.

Well, I'm typically much more of a savory vs. sweet type of person. But e.j. really wanted me to try my hand at fried ice cream. Being that he's not been much of a fan of most of my cooking challenge choices, I thought I'd oblige. So, I went in search of fried ice cream recipes. I ultimately settled on one from epicurious, my go to site for recipes. Here's the link: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Crispy-Macadamia-Nut-Fried-Ice-Cream-Balls-with-Chocolate-Macadamia-Nut-Sauce-14922




The recipe is pretty basic and the ingredients pretty simple. However, with the steps that required several hours of freezing in between, this project took me five days to complete. Mind you, that's five days of dedicating around 1o minutes most days to the project.




Day One: First I made twelve ice cream balls with an ice cream scoop. BTW, we'll be frying and eating these things for a while to come. We've only eaten two so far! One thing I forgot to do, and you can probably tell from the photo above, is to put the baking sheet in the freezer for 5 minutes first. If you look closely, you can see that the ice cream balls are starting to melt. Once I made all twelve ice cream balls, I covered them with plastic wrap and put them in the freezer. They only need to go in for between 3 and 8 hours. I did this on a Sunday night. So they were in the freezer for a full day.

At the same time as I was doing the ice cream balls, I was toasting the macadamia nuts. Some of these would be used for the ice cream balls and others would be used for the chocolate sauce.




Day Two: On Monday night, I rolled the now completely frozen ice cream balls in chopped macadamia nuts. I had to push the nuts into the balls to get them to stick. I covered the sheet again and put them back in the fridge. Once again, this only needs to go in the freezer for 3 to 8 hours, but it was in MUCH longer. I'm not home on Tuesday nights, so this was in the freezer for two full days.




Day Four: On day four I got ambitious and did two steps. I coated each ball in egg and rolled it in crushed corn flakes. In the freezer for an hour. Repeat. Cover and let freeze for 3 to 8 hours which for me meant the next evening.




Day Five: On Thursday night, upon returning from happy hour, I decided it was finally time to finish these things. First, I had to make the sauce to go with them. The recipe is also on Epicurious and can be found through the link for the fried ice cream. Making the sauce consisted of caramelizing the sugar, adding cream, and letting the caramalized sugar dissolve. Once it dissolved, I added the chocolate and chopped macadamia nuts. The step I forgot is that you should then put this all in the food processor and blend until it is fairly smooth. Oops! I don't know that it would have made a lot of difference in taste but it may have been more attractive.




Finally, it's time to fry something! That part was quick! Only twenty seconds and out. (What a waste of oil!)


This is Lou, a constant companion when cooking in the kitchen even if he ignores us the rest of the time.





And the finished product. You can see, the sauce would have probably been prettier if it had been processed, but oh well. As for taste, it was pretty good. I think if I were to do it again, I may play with the flavors a bit. Maybe chocolate ice cream with hazelnuts and a nutella sauce? e.j. and I both agreed that the sauce would be better with just straight up chocolate, cream, and nuts, leaving out the caramalized sugar. Overall, it was good but wouldn't make my go to list of desserts.

Photo credits go to e.j. who just got a new toy and had way too much fun shooting pictures of my progress.