Preserves

So Simple Apple and Blueberry Crumble Pie Ice Cream

Apple and Blueberry Crumble Pie Ice Cream is the fastest dessert I have ever made. I made it by blitzing leftover pie with ice cream in my food processor. It’s the perfect dessert to make when you have some leftover pie and ice cream, but not enough to serve up nicely. It’s perfect, because it evenly distributes both ice cream and pie into one delicous treat.

What Flavour of Pie and Ice Cream works best

You can make this ice cream with any leftover pie that you have on hand as there are many flavours of pie and ice cream that go so well together. I happened to have a very small slice of Apple and Blueberry Crumble Pie leftover from Mother’s Day. I also had a bit of Dulce de Leche Ice Cream as well as Vanilla Bean Ice Cream left in the freezer. So, this combination was divine!

A few suggestions of Pie and Ice Cream Flavour Combinations

apple pie and vanilla or caramel ice cream
pumpkin pie and cinnamon or caramel ice cream
cherry pie and chocolate ice cream or green tea ice cream
cheesecake and lemon ice cream
strawberry and rhubarb and french vanilla ice cream

What is the best Ratio of Pie to Ice Cream?

Italians have a great expression that I love; ‘ad occhio‘, which means ‘by eye’. And that’s the way this dessert is made: by eye. I made this pie ice cream combination with one small piece of pie and about 2/3 cup of Haagen Dazs ice cream. It made enough for two of us to have one small scoop of ice cream each. I loved that ratio with a piece of pie in every bite.

This is what I had on hand to make my pie ice cream. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it made a perfect dessert.

Add the pie to your food processor and blitz until crumbled. Pulsing it 2-3 times should be enough. Because you don’t want to turn your pie into a paste.

Next, add your ice cream. I used 1 small piece of pie and about 2/3 cup of ice cream. You could increase the amount of ice cream if you wanted a higher ratio of ice cream to pie.

pie and ice cream blitzed in a food processor

Pulse the pie and ice cream together about 5-6 times, so there aren’t any large pieces of pie in the bowl. Scoop this into a freezer-safe container. It will be ready in a couple of hours.

The pie that I used had a crumble top crust which gave the ice cream a nice crunch. If your pie has a regular crust, but would like some crunch in your ice cream, try adding some granola.

Blitzing pie and ice cream together created something even better than having them separate. It’s so good, that my family and I had a hard time deciding which was better: warm pie with ice cream on the side, or pie and ice cream blitzed together. Which do you prefer?

a bowl of ice cream with a glass of liqueur

This Apple and Blueberry Crumble Pie Ice Cream was really really good.

Which combination will you make?

Print Recipe

Apple and Blueberry Crumble Pie Ice Cream

Serves: 4

Cooking Time: 0 minutes

Ingredients

1-2 pieces of any type of pie
2/3 to 2 cups ice cream (a flavour of ice cream to go with the pie)

Instructions

Place pie in the food processor.

Blitz a couple of times until it is chopped in large pieces.

Add ice cream. The quantity depends on you, but about 1/3 to 1 cup of ice cream per slice of pie should be good, depending on what ratio of pie to ice cream you would like.

Blitz 5-6 times, until pieces of pie are quite small.

Using a spoon and spatula, remove ice cream from food processor and place in a freezer-safe container.

Place in the freezer for a few hours, until firm.

1:23 pm

Baking

Stunning Blueberry Mango Ice Cream Cake

This Blueberry Mango Ice Cream Cake with Amaretti Biscuits is colourful, luscious, and perfect for any occasion. But, it’s exceptionally stunning to serve as an Easter dessert. When it comes to cakes, I tend to lean towards baked cakes. But, ice cream cakes are different: the combination of flavours and textures are alluring; the beautiful colours are uplifting, and the flavour combinations are endless. If you are looking for something to wow your family, make them an ice cream cake. They will love it!

The first time I made an ice cream cake, I couldn’t believe how delicious, easy and professional looking it was. They are a real showstopper! It’s very exciting when you finally remove the sides of the springform pan and all the layers of ice cream, crust and cookies are unveiled before you eyes. Ice cream cakes are terrific if you are short on time, or need to do your cake preparations in the evening after the wee ones are in bed.

They also stay hidden very well in your freezer. This may not seem like an important issue, but if you’re anything like my family, surprise is key! My Mum made us birthday cakes every year, just like most Mums. But we never got even a sneak peak of the cake until dessert time. I always knew she had baked a cake, because the house smelled so good, but I could never find the cake. My Mum knew from the look on my face that I was perplexed, but would keep me guessing until the last minute when she brought the cake out all covered in lit candles. So, if you like to keep your cakes hidden until dessert time…this one’s for you!

Of course, this year, ice cream cakes have an added bonus – no flour!

I made this ice cream cake a few years ago for my son’s birthday, and again this year for his 21st birthday. Blueberries are his favourite fruit and mango pairs with them so well – colour-wise as well as in flavour.

Usually, when I make an ice-cream cake, I go to an ice cream shop and buy fun flavours and layer them up. In the future, when shops re-open, you could go that route…and then you have hundreds of flavours to play around with. But with ice cream shops closed, I decided to create my own flavoured ice cream by mixing vanilla ice cream and frozen blueberries and mangoes. Easy peasy!

There are many other flavour combinations you could use, with grocery store ingredients, if blueberry mango doesn’t appeal to you. Just follow the directions below with the fruit of your choice or mix and match ready-made store-bought ice cream flavours. You can’t go wrong with an Ice Cream Cake.

This cake starts off with a delicious buttery crunchy crust of graham cracker crumbs mixed with melted butter and sugar. The crust is baked in the oven for about 15 minutes until slightly golden and aromatic. Try not to eat it straight out of the pan. I dare you!

I chose Mango Ice Cream to be the bottom layer, as I thought the amaretti cookies would be a nice contrast against the blueberry ice cream. You could do it the other way around if you wanted. It would taste just as nice. Can’t find mango ice cream? Read on.

Blueberry Ice Cream is the top layer. So sweet and blueberry-delicious. Can’t find blueberry ice cream? Read on and find out what to do.

I had a quick look for amaretti biscuits in my local grocery store. But none were to be found. In more normal times, I might drive around the city looking for some. Instead, I decided to make my own. Homemade biscuits are actually tastier…more nuttier…less sweet. I think during this crazy lockdown period, we’re all learning to become a little more self-sufficient. And that’s a good thing.

If you can’t find amaretti biscuits, and don’t want to make your own, you could also cover the top with whipped cream (with a bit of sugar added) and sprinkle with coloured sugar or cake sprinkles. Frozen whipped cream is delicious!

This cake is so amazingly delicious. It’s the type of dessert that will make all of your the guests at the dining table absolutely silent as they savour the sweet blueberry, tangy mango and crunchy nutty amaretti cookies. So good!

Print Recipe

Blueberry Mango Ice Cream Cake with Amaretti Biscuits

Serves: 8

Ingredients

CRUST
2 cups graham cracker crumbs (or about 12-15 graham wafers)
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup butter (melted)
ICE CREAM FILLING
2 litres of vanilla ice cream
1 cup mangoes (thawed from frozen or fresh; this can be thawed in the microwave, just don't get the fruit too warm)
1 cup blueberries (thawed from frozen or fresh; this can be thawed in the microwave, just don't get the fruit too warm)
1/3 cup whole blueberries (optional)

Instructions

CRUST: Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Blitz graham crackers either in a blender or food processor until reduced to crumbs.

Pour crumbs into a bowl and stir in sugar.

Stir in melted butter until all incorporated.

Pat the crumb mixture into a 8" springform pan. Make sure the crumb mixture goes up the side of the pans. Try to spread the mixture evenly and not very thick, especially on the bottom and where the sides meet the bottom. If it's too thick, it will be very difficult to cut when serving.

Bake the crust in the oven for about 12-15 minutes, until golden in colour.

Place baked crust on rack and let cool until cold (about 30 minutes).

ICE CREAM FILLING: Remove vanilla ice cream from freezer and let it soften on the counter for 5-15 minutes, depending on how frozen it is when you remove it. You want to be able to scoop it out very easily.

If you are using frozen fruit, thaw the fruit in the microwave. If you don't have a microwave, you will have to start to thaw the fruit much earlier (such as in a container or zip lock bag in warm water in the sink).

Blitz the mango for the first layer on its own either in a food processor or a blender. If you don't have either of those, you can mash the fruit with a fork or potato masher. The texture is up to you. I blitzed mine until it was pureed, but the fruit can also be roughly smashed - that would be fine.

Stir the mango into the ice cream in a bowl or blitz in a food processor or blender, until the fruit is fully incorporated. For a marble effect, partially mix, so that there are swirls of fruit throughout the ice cream.

Pour the ice cream onto the cold graham cracker crust.

Cover with saran wrap and place level in the freezer.

After about 1-2 hours, when the first layer is semi frozen, you can repeat steps 8-11 with the blueberries. I stirred in some whole frozen blueberries with the pureed mixture. But that is completely optional.

Sprinkle the second layer of ice cream with the amaretti cookies.

Freeze the cake for several hours until very firm.

Prior to serving, remove the ice cream cake about 10 minutes before serving.

Slice carefully with a sharp knife and serve.

After serving, cover the remainder of the cake snugly with saran wrap and place in the freezer until the next time.

If covered properly, and kept frozen between servings this cake will keep in the freezer for a few weeks.

3:22 pm

Preserves

Honey-Vanilla Ice Cream with Cherry-Galliano Swirl

With all this hot weather we’ve been having, all I want to eat is ice cream. I just want to sit in a floaty chair in the pool and eat a big frosty bowl of ice cream – summer at it’s finest.

Ice cream was the first thing I wanted to make when I bought my annual 20 pound bucket of sour cherries. This combination of Honey-Vanilla Ice Cream with Cherry-Galliano Swirl is so perfect on a hot summer day!

When we were little, my sister and I always chose the wildest flavours of ice cream we could find. We had a favourite ice cream parlour, Donna’s Lunch in Burford, Ontario, which was on the way to our grandmother’s house. We loved going there and were always excited to see what new flavours she would have.

Everyone else in our family ordered the traditional vanilla, strawberry or chocolate flavours. But Ruth and I loved the craziest, at the time, of flavours: bubble gum, cotton candy, blueberry swirl and our favourite to this day, tiger tail.

A few wild flavours that I’ve seen in Ottawa lately are: Hong Kong Milk Tea, Fruit Loops Cereal Milk from Moo Shu Ice Cream Shop; Unicorn and Pink Grapefruit from The Beachconers Microcreamery; and Ferrero Rocher and Raffaelo + Coconut from Stella Luna Gelato Shop. It seems like when it comes to ice cream, anything goes.

The Galliano in this recipe is optional, but really boosts the flavour. Galliano is a vanilla flavour liqueur. It was originally produced in 1896 in Tuscany, Italy by a local distiller named Arturo Vaccari. He named this liqueur after Giuseppe Galliano, an Italian hero of the First Italo-Ethiopian War.

If you don’t have Galliano you could substitute it with brandy or another vanilla liqueur, or just leave it out. It will still taste amazing.

What’s your favourite flavour?

Enjoy

Print Recipe

Honey-Vanilla Ice Cream with Cherry-Galliano Swirl

Serves: 8-10

Cooking Time: 15-20

Ingredients

For the Honey-Vanilla Ice Cream
2 cups cream
1 cup milk
1/2 cup honey
For the Cherry-Galliano Swirl
140 grams sour cherries, pitted
20 grams sugar
2 Tbsp Galliano

Instructions

Heat 1 cup of cream and 1 cup of milk together with the honey until warm and honey is melted. You can do this on the stove top or in the microwave. Don't get the milk too hot to avoid forming a skin on top of the liquid.

Place the mixture in a container in the refrigerator for a few hours, or overnight, until it is very cold.

After it is cold, add the remaining 1 cup of cream.

Place in your ice cream maker and follow instructions.

For the swirl, heat the cherries and sugar until the sugar is dissolved thoroughly. This can also be done in the microwave or on top of the stove.

Place this mixture in a container in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight until cold.

When the cherry/sugar mixture is cold, blitz in your food processor or blender until the cherries are very finely chopped. Add the Galliano.

Pour churned ice cream into a rectangular or square container that can go in the freezer.

Pour the cold Cherry-Galliano mixture in two lines on top of the soft ice cream. Draw figure eights through the cherry and ice cream to create a swirly pattern. Do this until the cherries are swirled throughout the ice cream. If you do it too much, you will have less of a swirl, but the ice cream will still taste amazing.

Place in freezer for several hours or preferably overnight. Serve in a bowl, cone or waffle bowls.

Enjoy!

11:35 am