I LOVE LOVE ICE CREAM CAKES!!!!

I love cakes... 
but I love ice cream cakes more...
but I love love ice cream cakes most !!!

As the the weather in Greece is still sunny and the temperature reaches 30 degrees Celsius, I found good idea make this cake for a friend that was getting married. The cake was never delivered as a friend and I didn't manage to resist and we ate it...(It happened before I start dieting..) However I took this photo with my cell phone while we were eating the cake.

 It is so delicious that even if the weather is not so hot where you live or you are not that kind of person that eats ice creams all year long, it is worth a try!

For the chocolate biscuit base 

• 100 gr. softened butter
• 100 gr. bitter chocolate
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 200 gr. finely ground digestive biscuit crumbs

Directions

1. Melt the chocolate over a bain marie. 
2. In a saucepan heat the butter to melt it.
3. Ground the biscuits finely to turn them into crumbs using an electric chopper.
4. Add the biscuit crumbs and the melted chocolate to the butter and stir well.
5. Press the mixture into a 25-28 cm. springform cake tin. 
6. Chill for about 1 hour.

For the ice cream 

Please see my post Back in Time 

Directions

1. Prepare the ice cream mixture according to the steps described at Back in Time
2. Freeze it about half an hour.
3. Beat it again.
4. Put a layer of ice cream on the chocolate biscuit base.
5. Use a palette knife to smooth the surface.
6. Put the whole tin in the freezer for a couple of hours to firm up.
7. Before serving, put the cake on a cake plate and into the fridge to soften a little. 
8. Place the red hearts (see below) on the ice cream cake.
9. Slice with a knife dipped in hot water.

For the red heart toppers

• 200 gr. icing sugar
• 2 tbsp. lemon juice
• 3 tbsp. vegetable oil
• Vanilla extract (optionally)
• Red food dye
• Some water

Directions

1. Mix the icing sugar, the lemon juice, the vanilla extract and the vegetable oil in a saucepan.
2. Add some water to make thick syrup. 
3. Best way to avoid watery syrup is to add the water gradually.
4. Heat the mixture at low temperature for 5 minutes and process till the syrup converts to an opaque paste.
5. Add some red food dye drops and process 2 to 3 minutes.
6. Allow your paste to cool slightly.
7. Use a roller pin to flatten out the paste (0.5-1 cm thick).
8. With a heart-shaped cookie cutter, cut as many heart toppers as you want to use. 


The red hearts toppers can be stored at room temperature for a day. For later use you can refrigerate them.

BACK IN TIME

In an effort to clean my house, a photo caught my attention. It was an image of a little girl who laughs and holds an ice cream. I have changed so much since then. The photo was taken at my fifth birthday party!  My mom used to make little ice creams (that look like sandwiches) that everybody loved. The scent of vanilla drove me crazy. We never sat down to eat them,we just ran around holding an ice cream; the melted ice cream dripped onto our clothes and the carpets of the house made my mom mad.... Nonetheless she always cooked them again every time I asked her (with my help of course). In nostalgic mood I called her to give me the recipe which I post. I would like to mention that although I usually change the recipes she tells me, this time I followed it step by step. The process was really easy and I didn’t have to use an ice cream maker. It was so yummy! I have to admit that a little friend of mine was much more excited than I was... I guess this recipe was written for children... there is no other explanation I can give!

Ingredients

Some biscuits with rectangular shape

400gr sweetened condensed milk

400gr evaporated full fat milk

1 cup heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons sugar

Steps

Chill the heavy cream in the fridge for about one hour before use and the evaporated milk in the freezer for about half an hour. In a large bowl, beat the heavy cream, the vanilla extract and the sugar with mixer for about 10 minutes. Pour in the bowl the sweetened milk and beat with the mixer on high speed for 5 minutes more. Remove the evaporated milk from the freezer and add to the bowl, beat with the mixer on high speed for 10 minutes. Pour this mixture into a metal bowl; place it to the freezer for about half an hour. Take the bowl out of the freezer and beat the ice cream until it’s creamy once again. Repeat the previous step twice. Do this again so that you have beaten the mixture a total of 3 times while freezing in meantime. Put the ice cream back into the freezer until it’s quite soft but not too hard to handle. Take one biscuit and spoon ice cream over top of the biscuit, use the back of a spoon to press evenly. Place over the ice cream another biscuit and refreeze until set.

Tips

• To succeed without ice cream to harden and without making crystals, it is very important to beat the cream very well.
• In case you want to avoid all this process of beating and freezing so many times you can use an ice cream maker.