Beast Recipe – Christmas Cake Ice Cream

By Lee Price on December 8, 2011 in Food

Have you noticed that there are a number of Christmas traditions that don’t work so well in Australia? Here’s a short list of them:

• A hot roast dinner – sure it tastes delicious, but who wants to sweat it out over a tray of roast potatoes when it’s the middle of summer?

• Snow related items – such as snowmen or the wonder that is snow in a can.

• Christmas carols – well, just the ones that mention things like ‘oh the weather outside is frightful’.

• Christmas cake – there are usually one or two people in each family that love this, while everyone else turns their nose up and reaches for another beer instead.

So instead of ignoring these traditions altogether, why not mix them up a little? Rest assured, this recipe for Christmas cake ice cream doesn’t really taste much like Christmas cake at all, but it does have all of the good bits in it – chocolate, nuts, tasty dried fruits, and alcohol.

You can really make this recipe your own by using all of your family’s favourite ingredients and leaving out anything unpopular. Or maybe even have everyone customise their own ice cream and freeze it in individual containers.

Since it’s Christmas, why not splash out and get the best quality ingredients you can afford. After all, cheap chocolate still tastes like cheap chocolate even when frozen. And if you want to make a kid-friendly version, just use handfuls of their favourite chocolates and sweets instead of the fruits, nuts and booze.

Ingredients

2L good quality vanilla ice cream
200g sultanas
125g pitted prunes
125g glace cherries
60g mixed peel
125mls rum
160g almonds
100g block of dark chocolate, broken up into small pieces
300ml cream

Directions

1. Leave the ice cream out on the bench to get really soft while you prepare the other ingredients.

2. Chop up the chocolate, nuts and fruit into small pieces of roughly the same size, keeping the fruit to one side.

3. Place all of the fruit into a saucepan on medium heat and add the rum.

4. Heat gently for a few minutes so that the fruit begins to soak up the alcohol, then set aside to cool down a bit.
5. Stir the cream into the ice cream, mixing well.

6. Add in everything else and place into a plastic container to freeze overnight.

This ice cream is delicious on its own, or served alongside your favourite Christmas dessert such as cheesecake, mince pies or brownies.

Merry Christmas!

Have you got a great recipe that you would like to share? Send it through to operationjamjar@y7mail.com and you could see it in a future issue of the Beast Magazine.

For more recipes and thrifty cooking ideas visit operationjamjar.blogspot.com