Recipe - (No-Fry) Fried Ice Cream

Hi!  This is Jan's daughter, Dani.  I usually blog over at Craft Rookie, but with my mom's kitchen ripped to shreds for her remodel at the moment, I told her I'd step in and mix things up a bit this week.  I'm excited to get to share a fun (and extremely easy!) recipe here at Savings for Sisters today.

My mom's birthday falls in the beginning of December, so my sister and I always try to throw her a little party before the holidays get too busy.  This year we had it at my house and had a bit of a Mexican Fiesta. 

Jessie and I worked together to make southwest salad, chicken enchiladas, roasted corn with garlic, cilantro lime rice, and for dessert cinnamon bundt cake, and Easy No-Fry Fried Ice Cream.   

Fried Ice Cream is one of my all-time favorite desserts, but it seems so intimidating to make--I mean, FRIED ice cream?  It sounds like a deep-fry disaster!  The good thing about this recipe is that it involves no hot oil--or hot ANYTHING--near your ice cream, so it's foolproof! We looked up a few recipes online and sort of figured out what we thought would work well for us, and this is what we came up with.  This recipe was a snap to make, and it turned out really impressive and delicious--see the easy instructions below!

(No-Fry) Fried Ice Cream

Ingredients:

-One (18 oz) box of cornflake cereal
-1/2 cup (one stick) butter.
-1/2 cup sugar
-2 TBSP cinnamon

-3 Quarts of vanilla ice cream (if you plan to use all the topping)

*Some of the following photos are taken from other sites since we didn't think to snap photos of the process until the end of making it!  (Fail.)  Please click on the photos to go to their sites if you'd like to read more about their processes.*

Instructions: 

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

2. Crush cereal in a food processor, blender, or in a large Ziploc bag with a rolling pin.

3. Once you have it crushed to the texture you want it (like large sand particles, with a few larger pieces--not completely pulverized into dust), put your crumbs into a large mixing bowl and add the melted butter.  Stir in cinnamon and sugar until it is all well-mixed.

4. Place mixture in a thin layer on two (sprayed) cookie sheets and bake until golden-brown, stirring after every 3-5 minutes.  We actually burnt our first batch by not stirring frequently enough, so watch it carefully!  Remove from oven and let cool.

TIP: For more adventurous palates, you could add additional things to the mixture like chopped nuts, coconut, etc. before you bake the crumbs.  Or you could add things like sprinkles or mini chocolate chips after it's cooled.

While your crumbs are baking (but don't get distracted and forget to check it!), you can roll your ice cream balls.

5. Line baking sheets with waxed paper or parchment paper.  Make sure whatever pan you use can fit into your freezer.  Roll 1/2 cup portions for small balls, or 1 cup portions for larger balls. (Approximately--you don't have to measure, that would be a mess!)  

We rolled the ice cream into balls with our (very clean) hands at this point, but I read later on that you could actually just scoop them into approximate shapes (as pictured) and then mold them into more perfect balls right before you roll them...which probably would've given us less frostbite! Haha! 

You want to work quickly and get them back into the freezer as soon as possible.  Re-freeze them for as long as you can, but make sure you give them at least a couple of hours so they get nice and solid. 

When you are close to ready to serve:
6. Working in batches, roll the ice cream into the coating.  Don't pull all your ice cream balls out at once or they will melt! TIP: You might want to separate out only part of your coating at a time if you don't plan to use it all, so you don't contaminate any leftovers for future use with ice cream drips.

If you aren't quite ready to serve them at this point, or you need to roll several, you can put them back in the freezer until you are ready.

TOPPINGS:  We did caramel sauce over ours, but you could do whatever combination you want.  Some popular topping choices are hot fudge, strawberry sauce, maple syrup, honey, etc.  You could even have a bit of a toppings bar if you wanted people to have choices.  You could also serve with whipped cream on top.

YIELD: This amount of topping will cover about three quarts' worth of vanilla ice cream balls (will make 36 small/18 large).  If you don't need that many ice cream balls at once, this topping will store for awhile, so you could make more at a later date.  We even sprinkled some over some leftover ice cream and didn't roll it into balls a few nights later and it was awesome that way too.

Thanks for the great post Dani!