Saturday 28 July 2012

Dead Elvis

I was a bit doubtful about condensed milk ice creams when I heard this month's BSFIC theme - not that condensed milk isn't delicious, you understand, it's more that it was hard to believe that it would make an ice cream that would be as good as you get from custard.

So I did some experimenting.
I whisked a tin of condensed milk with (I think) 600ml of double cream and a bit of vanilla extract.
Despite my concerns, it thickened up pretty well, so I stirred in some chocolate chippy bits, chucked it all into a (lined) loaf tin, stuck it into the freezer and forgot about it till the next day.

When I took it out of the freezer, it was a (apparently tragically unphotographed and now gone) revelation - smooth, creamy and delicious.
Unbelievable that an ice cream which took about 6 minutes of preparation and had no stirring or churning AT ALL could be so creamy, fluffy and delicious.
I was a total convert. SO easy.
I may never make real ice cream again!

So anyway, experiments all done and dusted, I set about thinking of awesome things that I could make with my new found lazy-icecream technique and, as I thought, one thing kept springing into my mind.

A few months ago, husband and I went and sat on a roof near London Fields and ate buckets of seafood at the God Save the Clam popup.
The buckets were good (and where else do you get to hit your food with a mallet before eating it?) and the cocktails were strong, but the thing that I really remember was the pudding - the Fat Elvis sundae - peanut butter ice cream, bacon butterscotch, bacon bits and croutons.
It was good. Very good indeed, so I decided to make my own version.

I made the same condensed milk ice cream as above - whisking a tin of condensed milk with 600ml cream, but this time, I omitted the vanilla and mixed in probably half a jar of peanut butter (I used wholemeal scrunchy, but obviously smooth or non wholemeal would also be fine) and a bit of honey for extra Elvosity.
While it was in the freezer, I made my other bits.
I crisped up some streaky bacon in the George and made a caramel sauce by caramelising sugar in a pan and then adding butter (I'd normally use cream, but I'd already used all that up in the ice cream -
butter gives a good flavour, but I think it's more difficult to work with - it constantly wants to separate from the caramel) and a wee pinch of salt flakes (much as I hate to jump on bandwagons, I do rather love my caramel salty).
I chopped a couple of bananas and added them to the hot caramel sauce. This makes for a surprisingly good flavour and does a nice thing to the bananas where some of them smoosh a bit into the sauce and some of them sort of solidify a bit, which is a lot yummier than it sounds and adds a kind of Elvissy peanut butter and banana sandwich element to proceedings.
I left all this overnight to cool/freeze etc and the next day, assembled my pudding, adding in some slightly smashed salted peanuts to add a bit of crunch (in place of the croutons, which, it turned out, I couldn't be bothered to make).

So here it is - the Dead Elvis.
(Disclaimer - this is NOT a healthy option).





This is my entry for the July Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream challenge.





2 comments:

  1. One of the best aspects of this month's challenge is how (positively) surprised everyone has been at just how good a condensed milk and cream base ice cream turns out to be. When you take into account how quick and easy it is too, it becomes a Jenn-you-ine winner! Your recipe makes me want to come over with begging bowl (and spoon) to beg for a taster!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yup - totally - is going to make it hard to go back now - maybe I never will :-)
      And you should have - I've just had to get rid of the last bit in order to stop myself eating it...

      Delete