In 1984, President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of the month as National Ice Cream Day. He recognized ice cream as a fun and nutritious food that is enjoyed by over 90 percent of the nation's population. In the proclamation, President Reagan called for all people of the United States to observe these events with "appropriate ceremonies and activities."
The International Ice Cream Association (IICA) encourages retailers and consumers to celebrate July as National Ice Cream Month. In 2015, National Ice Cream Day will be Sunday, July 19. (source)
Back in July, while it was still National Ice Cream month, and while we had company to help us eat up our experiments, we decided to try out a couple of ice cream themed recipes floating around online.
The first - a two ingredient, ice cream bread recipe, we found on Myrecipes.com (though it's been posted and reposted often enough, I'm not sure where it originated) turned out to be not too bad.
All it calls for is a pint of the ice cream flavor of your choice, softened...
...mixed together with 1 and 1/2 cups of self-rising flour (cheating just a little to meet that "two ingredient" claim).
We chose butter pecan ice cream for our bread, which we baked according to the recipe for 45 minutes at 350°F in a sprayed 8x4'' loaf pan. However, I happened to see someone else using a pineapple coconut ice cream, that also sounded very yummy.
Our bread didn't rise much...
...but served with warm, with cinnamon honey butter (softened butter with cinnamon and honey stirred in to taste)...
...it was, as I think I've already said, not too bad. We will keep this recipe to try again. If nothing else it's quick and easy, and makes a passable quick bread, which will be nice on snowy winter afternoons, with a cup of hot chocolate.
As for the second recipe we came across - ice cream cake - which calls for a cake mix, three eggs, and a softened pint of ice cream (we opted for chocolate cake, and cherry cordial ice cream)...
...we missed the moistening effect of the oil called for on the cake box. The cake was dry, and quite frankly, a little blaw. Maybe it was our flavor choices, but we all agreed, the ice cream would have added more flavor, and better texture, served along with, rather than in the cake. After a few sample pieces, we tossed the left-overs (which says a lot in a house with three resident, and two visiting, teenagers). Still the mind-boggling number of ice cream and cake mix combinations out there, might yet tempt us to try this one again.
I have never heard of using ice cream as an ingredient in cake or bread. I think I like ice cream too much and cake not enough to try it, however. It was interesting to see what you thought, though.
ReplyDeleteIn college I used to eat frozen yogurt on top of baked bread for dinner, along with a spinach and raisin salad.
ReplyDeleteYou've certainly got me intrigued enough to give it a try. And with the great Blue Bell Famine of 15......
ReplyDeleteWe made that a few years ago. It was pretty good. You all are up to lots of fun.
ReplyDeleteBlessings, Dawn