Gluttony is a sin most of us willingly indulge in when it comes to ice creams. And though ice cream makes for a perfect dessert by itself, mix it with fruits and a blast of goodness for an added dose of taste. And if strawberries with a scoop of mango ice cream or mango slices on vanilla have forever been on your dessert menu, it’s time for a refreshing change. Experts dish out some interesting recipes to make your fruity sundae special.
From oranges to pineapples, fruits are not just meant to be sprinkled on ice creams but the trick is to use fruit with ice cream in a way that you get a perfect mix of both. For instance, there’s a way to blend orange in chocolate ice cream to make sure it tastes just right.
Explaining the recipe, chef Ravi Chandran Pillaim from Toro explains, “Squeeze the juice from an orange. Pour into a small saucepan and heat it with star anise. When the liquid is half in quantity, let it cool. Now peel three oranges, slice them and place them on a dish and pour the anise-flavoured orange juice over top. Divide the oranges among four serving plates, sprinkle with chocolate shavings and serve with two scoops of chocolate ice cream.”
However, if you’re too lazy to try something so elaborate, here’s a tip. Get all your favourite fruits from the market and blend them together to make a fruitilicious ice cream combo. And if you’re willing to give it a twist, try adding some waffles to the combo and make these waffles at home. Chef Tarun Kapoor from The Metropolitan Hotel shares a fruity recipe. “You can easily prepare waffle fruits ice cream at home. Just take two eggs and beat them in a large bowl until fluffy. Now dissolve sugar in milk and keep aside for a few minutes. Pour milk into the whipped eggs and add vanilla, salt and clarified butter. Sift flour with baking powder and fold with the above mixture. Preheat waffle iron and pour the prepared mixture in it, cook till golden brown and remove. Now cut all the fruits in dices and fill the waffle with fruits and place an ice cream scoop in the centre. Your dessert is ready.”
And there’s always room for innovation with fruits. You can always give your desserts a tempting display with the help of leftover peels and fruit skin. For instance, you can make a pineapple boat and present your ice cream. You just have to cut the pineapple in half, scoop out the pineapple, add butter in a frying pan and add scooped pineapple, pineapple juice and honey. Explaining further a chef from Jolly Rogers tell us, “After cooking the pineapple for 3 to 4 minutes, put it back in the pineapple shell. Put three different scoops of ice creams along with sauces. Put dollops of cream on top of ice creams along with maraschino cherry and mint leaves and serve immediately.”
Though we’ve all heard of cooking fruits, how about grilling some? Little do our foodies know how char grilling banana adds a fantastic flavour to the fruit and grilling it gives it a new tantalising effect. But this requires you to prepare an ice cream base with milk, fresh cream, sugar, liquid glucose, vanilla essence, ice cream stabliser and milk powder.
“Then take the bananas and char grill half of the bananas. Now take banana roundels and coat them in caramel, this gives the crunch to the ice cream. Cool the caramelised bananas as well as the char grilled bananas on a sil pad. Take the vanilla ice cream and mix in the bananas along with banana essence. Put the ice cream in a container, which is already chilled. Freeze it overnight before serving,” says a chef from The Second Sin.