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:
- 1x 500ml pot Strawberry Cheesecake Haagen Dazs
- 400ml self-raising flour
- 1/2 tsp salt – optional, but advised for all but saltiest ice creams
- 2 tsp vegetable oil, or butter, to grease
- Preheat oven to 175C (450F).
- Allow the ice cream to pretty much melt. (I used the 40 minute trip home from the supermarket to achieve this.)
- Pour ice cream into a mixing bowl.
- 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.
- Oil / butter loaf tin until well-greased.
- Bake for 45-50 minutes, until a cocktail stick stuck into the centre comes out clean.