Baking with ice cream brings new creative ideas

I learned something surprising this week – you can make baked goods with ice cream. I’m not talking about the fascinating (and complex) dessert known as Baked Alaska or Bombe Alaska. In that dish, ice cream is encased in cake followed by a coating of meringue and then baked. The two exterior layers are both poor conductors of heat, so the ice cream stays frozen while the meringue browns.

The new ingredient I discovered was to replace the eggs, sugar and butter found in cake and muffin recipes with slightly softened ice cream. I first encountered this in a newspaper article which called it “Three-ingredient blueberry muffins.” As it was written, the recipe actually included five ingredients, so I tried to make it as originally intended, mixing together vanilla ice cream, self-rising flour and fresh blueberries.

Warm from the oven, the crumb was tender and the blueberries meltingly delicious. The only feature that didn’t shine was a slightly flat taste to the cake, which could explain why the modified recipe added lemon zest. For people with a serious sweet tooth, this may not be the best recipe to choose, as the muffins were not overly sweet, which might be why the modified recipe added a dusting of turbinado sugar.

The best thing about the recipe was how simple it was to assemble. The trickiest aspect was softening the ice cream by beating it with a wooden spoon, while preventing it from becoming ice cream soup. The dough was very thick compared to a traditional muffin batter, but it wasn’t impossible to incorporate the berries. It baked a little longer than regular muffins at a slightly lower oven temperature.

With this newfound insight, I started looking for other ways to use this unusual ingredient in baking. A quick search on the internet revealed two approaches. One was to substitute melted ice cream for some of the ingredients added to a boxed cake mix, often including additional eggs. The other approach was similar to the muffin recipe, using either self-rising flour or cake flour with added leavening.

In almost all cases, the recipes called for some sort of melted sugar glaze, usually in a flavor to complement the ice cream, while others suggested a drizzle of Nutella or caramel sauce. There were all sorts of suggestions for add-ins, such as sprinkles, chocolate chips, crumbled cookies or chopped candy bars. Every imaginable flavor of ice cream appears, always with the caveat to use full-fat, not lite or low-fat varieties.

I’ve included the recipe that started me on this topic. If you make it, I would encourage adding the optional ingredients, as I believe they improve the flavor of the final product. Note that the yield is just six muffins, so you’ll need to double the amount of each ingredient to make a full dozen. And, use paper muffin tin liners to save on the clean up step. These are best right from the oven, but will keep a few days in an airtight container.

I’ve also included the second recipe I tried, which makes a chocolate pound cake. You’ll notice it cooks more quickly than the typical one hour required for the traditional recipe. This recipe can be modified by substituting a different flavor of ice cream, such as coffee. You’ll have a quick, easy and decadent dessert. Who knew you could bake a cake with ice cream?

Ice Cream Muffins*

1 1/2 C full-fat vanilla ice cream
1 C self-rising flour
2 t grated lemon zest
3/4 C blueberries
2 T turbinado sugar

Preheat oven to 375 F. Line a six-cup muffin tin with paper liners; set aside. Allow the ice cream to soften, but not melt. Place ice cream in a mixing bowl and use a wooden spoon to stir it to the consistency of soft-serve ice cream. Add flour and lemon zest; stir to combine completely. Gently fold in berries, taking care not to mash them. Divide the batter evenly across the prepared muffin cups. Sprinkle muffin tops with sugar and bake until golden, about 35 minutes. Yield: 6 muffins. *Adapted from the Washington Post.

Ice Cream Pound Cake

2 C full-fat chocolate ice cream
1 1/2 C self-rising flour

Preheat oven to 350 F. Coat the inside of a loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray; set aside. Place the ice cream in a mixing bowl and stir with a wooden spoon until melted. Mix in flour, stirring until combined. Scrape batter into prepared pan. Bake until a cake tester comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Allow to cool slightly, then drizzle with chocolate glaze. Allow to cool completely before slicing.

Chocolate Glaze

1/2 C unsalted butter
10 oz semisweet chocolate

Set a bowl over a pot of simmering water; do not allow the bowl to touch the water. Place butter and chocolate in the bowl. Melt the ingredients slowly, stirring to combine. This glaze will set up hard on the surface of cakes and cupcakes.