Tag Archives: ice cream

Recipe: Haagen-Dazs Strawberry Cheesecake Loaf

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A cake loaf with the flavour of fancy ice cream – what more could you want?

I first saw the idea for this on Quora, and it fits firmly into the ‘cooking hacks’ notion of recipes, what with having three / four ingredients, and taking about 3 minutes to prepare. The result was a pretty successful, though very crumbly cake – but the short cut doesn’t deliver what you might hope for from a fancier recipe.

“A cake loaf with the flavour of fancy ice cream – what more could you want?”

I’ll probably try it again, with another flavour of ice cream – probably one with more solid ‘chunks’ that will add some interesting variety. Oh, and probably a flavour with a chocolatey bent.

I didn’t add any salt to my cake, and that was a mistake, since it was a little blander than I’d hoped for. Obviously if you go for a saltier ice cream (I’m thinking e.g. cookie dough) you might want to hold off, but I’ll be adding some next time.

Quora suggested that you could mix the flour with half the ice cream, and then fold in the rest of the ice cream to create ‘streaks’ of flavour veined through the cake. I found that half the ice cream produced a very dry dough that you wouldn’t be able to fold anything into, so I didn’t bother in the end. Your mileage may vary.

So here’s the recipe – simple as:

Recipe: Haagen-Dazs Strawberry Cheesecake Loaf
 
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A moist, super-simple loaf cake that takes about 3 minutes to prepare. You can (probably) use any ice cream flavour. The cake should rise, crack and brown a bit, producing a light but slightly moist, doughy cake. Obviously stating the flour by volume rather than weight is a cardinal sin of baking, but since the whole idea is to be super quick and simple (and scale easily) this is the way to do it!
Author:
Recipe type: Dessert
Cuisine: Cake
Serves: 4-10
Ingredients
  • 1x 500ml pot Strawberry Cheesecake Haagen Dazs
  • 400ml self-raising flour
  • ½ tsp salt - optional, but advised for all but saltiest ice creams
  • 2 tsp vegetable oil, or butter, to grease
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 175C (450F).
  2. Allow the ice cream to pretty much melt. (I used the 40 minute trip home from the supermarket to achieve this.)
  3. Pour ice cream into a mixing bowl.
  4. Fill the now-empty pot four-fifths full with flour, stir in salt, and mix into ice cream with a metal spoon until mostly non-lumpy.
  5. Oil / butter loaf tin until well-greased.
  6. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until a cocktail stick stuck into the centre comes out clean.

 

Baked Alaska at The Lawn Bistro

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BakedAlaskaFlambeing

So I’ve a confession: I’ve never eaten baked Alaska!

That does mean that I’ve long known the ‘trick’ to the dish, which slightly diminishes the surprise of its cold-on-the-inside baked-on-the-outside magic. But The Lawn Bistro adds an additional flourish: pouring over liquor and flambéing the meringue at the table. This resulted in some impressive flames, heat, and a deliciously tart caramelised exterior.

“The Lawn Bistro adds an additional flourish”

We’ve rather painted ourselves into a corner with one of our principal rules of Chowdown Showdown Londontown – namely that ‘size matters’, so we each have to have one of the particular dish. Largely the problem with this has been that it means you end up with two large bowls of lacklustre cabbage (sorry Rasa and your Thoran!), but this can also be a problem when we come across sharing platters, and are forced to down the lot. This time, however, we nudged the rules in our favour. Having asked the waitress whether the dish (on the menu as for two) would serve three (since Alex had joined us in this outing), we opted to have a single portion. This was definitely the right decision: how they could expect two to manage this I don’t know!

To return to the spectacle of the fire: this restaurant does aim to impress. I really struggled to choose starters and mains, switching repeatedly between options, every one of which had some stand-out parts among a long-list of ingredients. And, indeed, the food was delicious, if risking allowing the best part to be drowned out among a plethora of other contributions.

Sadly, the Alaska didn’t especially stand out for me. Whilst it was certainly a reward to sweet-toothed eaters who’d made it as far as dessert, it rather lacked depth. The ice cream was plain-old-vanilla and the meringues plain-old-egg-white and plain-old-sugar. I was left feeling they could have gone an extra mile, but settled for just sloping over the line. At least I’ve reached the having-eaten-baked-Alaska winning post.

Malaga raisin ice-cream with Pedro Ximenez sherry at Morito

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Don’t make the mistake we did! On reading Time Out’s listing for what to eat at Morito, we misinterpreted the “Malaga raisin ice cream with Pedro Ximenez sherry” as a cheeky demand on the magazine’s part for us to construct our own hybrid dessert by ordering sherry to accompany our ice cream.

“In actual fact, it wasn’t such a bad error to make!”

On tasting the sherry it was clear that this was a pudding in itself (in a way I’ve never before appreciated of a ‘dessert wine’) – super-sweet and with an amazing raisin taste which surprised me with how little it tasted of fresh grapes. When the ice cream arrived – or rather was scooped into bowls and had a thick red-brown liquid poured over it (should I say ‘constructed’?), we realised our mistake! In actual fact, it wasn’t such a bad error to make!

And then, something extraordinary happened. After the first mouthful Rachael uttered the words ‘this is in the top ten’. Completely matter-of-fact, completely unprompted.

The ice cream was a relatively straightforward, simple offer, with a light vanilla punctuated by the punch of Malaga raisins. Complexity, richness, a shaper edge, and, frankly, a lot more sweetness was added from the shot of sherry poured over.

I don’t really rate rum and raisin as an ice cream flavour, but this raisin and sherry I could certainly get used to. In fact, this is a great dessert I might make at home, for those times when I have an elaborate starter and main and want a simple sweet as much for my cooking sanity as to avoid overpowering guests’ palates. Vital to get really good quality ice cream and a top notch (sweet!) sherry. I’ll definitely try it!

12/100 of Time Out’s recommended list

Salted Caramel Ice Cream at Oddono’s

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Oddono’s is right opposite GBK, where we’d just indulged in Kiwi Burgers (another of the Chowdown Showdown list). I’d resisted the black and white malt option with my burger, since I’d known we were stopping off across the road for ice cream – so the expectations laid on this gelateria were high.

“I’ll certainly be heading back to Oddonno’s”

Like any of the new breed of London ice cream shops specialising in traditional Italian gelato, the flavours are numerous and range from the obvious – dark chocolate – to the unusual – panettone. As you might imagine, the latter is seasonal, and Oddonno’s recently announced that Salted Caramel had been promoted from occasional treat to permanent flavour. Is this a sign that Salted Caramel is now over? Rachael asserts this happened when they started selling salted caramel truffles in M&S. I can’t deny it’s a more standard pairing than even two years ago – but rightly so, they go together like cheese and pickle, like eggs and bacon, like hot dog and onion. Though not necessarily all in ice cream form!

I like it. In fact, I really like it. I made the mistake of asking for panettone with salted caramel on top, so the flavour wouldn’t be masked by the melting panettone, but the waitress took this to mean I’d like less of the salted caramel. Which was a shame, as I thought it was a stand-out flavour. Luckily, I’ve got a voucher for a litre takeaway tub, so at least half of that will be salted caramel.

What else can I say about ice cream? Well, it isn’t Gelupo, and it doesn’t have the same sense of adventure in its range. If you’re trying to impress a date you should definitely take them to Bocca’s frozen sibling. But I’ll certainly be heading back to Oddono’s. At least for another litre!

56/100 Time Out recommended dishes in London

Peanut butter and jelly sandwich at Spuntino

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There was much debate about whether this was an ice-cream sandwich. That is, before we reached Spuntino a couple of Chowdown Showdown Getsarounders were insistent that they weren’t interested in eating a plain old peanut butter and jam sandwich. In spite of my insistence, we couldn’t be totally sure until the dish was put in front of us.

“It’s funny, sweet, caloric, unsubtle… and the perfect American dessert”

Of course, the moment it arrived we got the ‘joke’, and a very witty one it is too. It’s a sandwich, and an ice-cream sandwich, and neither. ‘Bread slices’ of peanut ice-cream are sandwiched around raspberry jam (yes, it’s jelly in the American sense), with a sprinkling of peanut brittle on top.

And you know what? It’s delicious. Massively indulgent, rich, and clearly a treat. I don’t even know if I’d (rush out to) eat it again. But it’s funny, sweet, caloric, unsubtle… and the perfect American dessert. The ice-cream was moreish, melting into a creamy, nutty pool. The jam was super-sweet, tart and fresh. The brittle crunchy and chewy.

I’m eager to eat at Spuntino again, and this madcap dessert adventure has certainly made me want to see what other tricks they have up their sleeves.

28/100 best London dishes