When you first heard of fried ice cream, you probably thought, "That's crazy!" After all, how can you fry something that is cold? You would think that it would melt before it could ever be served. But when you first tried fried ice cream, probably in a Mexican restaurant as that seems to be where they are served the most, it’s an amazing experience. They really can fry the ice cream so the outside is hot and fried and inside is nice, cold ice cream. What melting there is oozes into the crust, which makes them even tastier.
Now it is possible to make fried ice cream at home. Just think of the fun of serving this treat at a special dinner and hearing the amazed expressions of "Wow" and "This is great" all directed at you for pulling off this exciting desert. It isn’t that hard but it will take some preparation. So get all the stuff together well in advance so you can prepare the treat as early as the morning before the dinner. Then you will be completely ready to serve when you want to spring your surprise on your family and friends.
It all starts with the ice cream. Vanilla is a good choice although you can play with flavors as you get experienced with this desert. Use a standard ice cream scoop that you can create completely round ice cream balls with. You might have to practice with the scoop to make perfectly round balls by rolling the ice cream when you scoop it. Using a cookie sheet, scoop out 8-12 ice cream balls. Put them immediately into the freezer to become solid in that shape. This is important because freezing works differently for a small ball of ice cream than when it is in the tub and you want the ice cream tube very hard when you are ready to fry it.
Let the ice cream balls freeze for at least an hour before the next step. Now you know why we had you start early. Now in a medium sized bowl, combine three cups of corn flakes and crush them into tiny pieces for the coating. Combine the flakes with a teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Now in a separate bowl, break three eggs and whip them until the yokes are blended with the whites. Now take out the ice cream balls and dip them into the egg mixture and then cover the ice cream with the corn flake coating. Get them completely coated and return them to the cookie tray and freeze it all for another 3 hours.
When it is time to make the desert, prepare your fryer with cooking oil. Using a frying basket, dip a few ice cream balls at a time into the hot oil. Cook them for no more than fifteen seconds. Do them all quickly so there isn’t much time from when you start to when you serve. Now put them all on a serving dish. Cover them with whipped cream and drizzle some honey over them and top with a cherry. Then serve your guests and just wait for the "Wows" to come rolling in.
The reasons people get started making their own ice cream are many. For a lot of people it is the fun that compiling the ingredients and working the ice cream maker is and how it can become another great part of any family event. The memory of being on the farm with the aunts and uncle and grandparents and everybody having a role to play in making the ice cream with the old, hand-cranked churn is a strong one for a lot of adults. So by recreating that event with their own ice cream maker, it becomes part of the memories the kids will have of growing up too.
When you buy your ice cream maker to make this part of your family life become a reality, the choices are pretty broad. You can get a modern churn that looks somewhat like the old fashioned kind but you still work it on the porch with family members taking turns working the crank so the ice mixes with the ingredients inside to make great ice cream. There are old-fashioned models of ice cream makers that, although not old, look like throw backs to another time in history. And of course, finding an antique ice cream maker can really make the experience authentic. You might hesitate at using that unit because of its age. It makes a great display piece in the living room and a great conversation starter though.
There are also ice cream makers that are nothing like the old-fashioned kind at all. They are electric models that are fully automated. They look and perform very much like any other kitchen appliance. You compile the ingredients the same and put it all together. But when you plug it in and let it go, the gentle whirring sound lets you know it is churning the ice cream. It all happens in the kitchen so some of the ambiance of the family working on the ice cream on the porch is lost.
Whether or not to use an electric ice cream maker is a decision that you should make before making your purchase decision. There are some real advantages to going this route. For one thing, the churning action is consistent and continuous when it is being handled automatically. So the ice cream is made more efficiently. By letting the machine do the churning, you take much of the tedium out of the process. You don’t have to time how long to churn because the machine does that and it knows when to stop because it can gauge when the ice cream has "set up" inside the interior chamber.
The good news is that you don’t have to give up the atmosphere and the fun of having the whole family involved just because you want to get an ice cream maker that automates the churning. There are models made to look like the old-fashioned kind and models that can be operated on the porch. In most cases, that constant churning was something the family dreaded anyway. So by automating that part and combining the best of technology with the old-fashioned art of making your own ice cream, you get the best of both worlds.
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