Enjoy the Last Day of National Ice Cream Month

Today is the last day of National Ice Cream Month -- we've enjoyed it thoroughly but we are ready to take a break from daily posts for a bit -- though we'll still post often. This month always reminds us of how many awesome ice cream related things there are to post about. So we'll keep 'em coming and please feel free to send us anything you think is blog-worthy as well!

It was a big month, full of contests, recipes, events, and even our 300th post! (We got some great feedback which I'll share soon, as well as picked the winners from our drawing, but I just realized I can't post the winners names because I only have their email addresses -- but congrats to our winners!)

I am keeping this short because today is a special day for me...my golden birthday...thirty-one on the thirty-first. While my friend Karla (who first told me about "golden birthdays") wanted to celebrate her golden birthday by being on Deal or No Deal, I am off to celebrate in a simpler way -- with cake and ice cream -- perfection!

Thanks to Anisha Palmer for the yummy photo above.

[Scoopalicious is celebrating National Ice Cream month with a Post-A-Day throughout the month of July!]

Instructables Homemade Magic Shell

Marsha recently sent over a recipe from Instuctables on how to make a homemade "Magic Shell" for ice cream by scoochmaroo (who also has some more pretty cool Instructables, so check them out!) Since I am a huge fan of Dairy Queen's cherry dip cone, I am going to have to figure out how to make this in cherry! For now though, I'll settle for the chocolate!

As a bonus, today only, Deals.Woot has a Cuisinart soft serve machine on sale for $39.99 + $5.00 shipping. (Thanks to Marsha yet again for this tip!). If you miss the deal no worries, you can get the soft serve machine here. With the machine, a box of wafer cones, and the Instructable, you can have a Dairy Queen chocolate dip right in your kitchen!

Ooooh, this might also be an interesting variation instead if the whipped cream frosting on yesterday's cake!

[Scoopalicious is celebrating National Ice Cream month with a Post-A-Day throughout the month of July!]

Peanut Butter Ice Cream Cake

I made an ice cream cake this week. It was only the second one I have ever made, so I was pretty excited with how it came out.

Basically, I layered the all the ingredients (except for the whipped frosting, sprinkles, and peanut butter cups) in a spring form pan, froze it, then when completely frozen, released it, and frosted and decorated it.

1.  I crumbled a box of Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafer Cookies in the food processor and added a half a stick of butter to help them stick. I used half of this crumble (or maybe a little more) as the bottom layer. In retrospect, next time I probably would use Oreos in place of the Wafer Cookies , because the cream would help it stick better. 
2. Next, I piled on a layer of ice cream. I used Jacques Torres Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe (it's a little hidden in the entire recipe listed, but well worth it.) While not usually a honey fan, I love the flavor that the touch of honey adds to it. Instead of vanilla bean, I used 2 tablespoons of vanilla bean paste. Unfortunately, I used to be able to get this at Trader Joe's for $4.99 a bottle, but as with everything I love from Trader Joes, they stopped carrying it. It's best to use the ice cream right out of the ice cream maker, so have the crust ready to go.
3. Next, the remainder of the cookie crumble.
4. I then added peanut butter sauce. My friend and I have been trying to reproduce Friendly's sauce. I found a recipe online here, but as I was making it, I thought it wasn't peanut buttery enough, and I added more. I shouldn't have. I think if I had left it as is, it would have been perfect. Thanks Rachelle at the Saucy Little Dish! Spreading was impossible, so I more dropped it on as dollops. I froze this layer while I made the next layer. 
5. I then added a layer of peanut butter ice cream straight out of the ice cream maker. This recipe was from The Ultimate Peanut Butter Book: Savory and Sweet, Breakfast to Dessert, Hundereds of Ways to Use America's Favorite Spread by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough. I love these guys. You can also use the recipe from their The Ultimate Ice Cream Book: Over 500 Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, Drinks, And More (my bible in ice cream making) but the one in The Ultimate Peanut Butter Book is more peanut butter, which is what the cake recipients liked! Freeze the cake after this step until frozen solid.
6. I then released the cake from the spring form, and frosted it. Frosting was made up of two cups of whipping cream whipped with 1/4 cup cocoa powder and a 1/4 cup granulated sugar until stiff peaks formed.
7. I decorated the cake with six Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and chocolate sprinkles, but really, you could do as you please!

Freeze again until the whipped topping is frozen and enjoy!

My apologies for the coloring on both photos. My phone makes them a little too yellow and the quality isn't great, we were impatient to try the cake (which, I forgot to add, was AMAZING, if I do say so myself -- but the guests enjoyed it too), and I am not great at color adjustment!

[Scoopalicious is celebrating National Ice Cream month with a Post-A-Day throughout the month of July!]

Part One - The Ice Cream Mega Ball Experiment

I first have to thank my awesome co-blogger for this fun gift, Ice Cream Revolution's Mega Ice Cream Ball. I swear every time I see this in a store I think about how fun it would be but its one of those things you just wouldn't buy for yourself so when Bethany surprised me on my birthday with this I was so excited! Basically its this ball that you add cream, sugar, and flavoring in the middle. Then add rock salt and ice in the freezing compartment and shake, roll, throw, rotate and do whatever you have to in order to self churn the ingredients to make soft serve ice cream on the spot. No electric, no eggs...just fun!


 
So why the two parts? Well basically because I can't say I took part in the first attempt at making ice cream with the ball so when I go camping next weekend I hope to bring you Part Two of my own personal experience of making ice cream in the woods.

So yesterday while at work I received a text from my summer sitter asking if it was okay to use that "ball thing" to make ice cream with the kids. Absolutely! It's fun for everyone. I was truly bummed that I couldn't be the first to test it out but I was excited to get home to see how it went. So I anxiously ran home and the first thing I asked was how'd it go? Hmmm....she said she vigorously shaked the thing for the 15 minutes it called for and when she opened it it had slightly frozen on the edges so she closed it and kept at it. One suggestion I had after checking out the Mega Ball's web site was to go on the trampline with it. It was a sure way to keep it rolling and shaking. So they kept rolling and shaking and when she went to open it back up she had closed it so tight they couldn't get it back open. My poor daugheter was so excited to try the vanilla ice cream they made so I went in and tried, and tried, and tried, and tried to get it open. Ugh..I now had to wait 3 hours for the husband to come home. And I was sooooo curious I went back in the freezer and tried more than once during those few hours as I was determined to see what was inside asap. No luck!

So finally....hours later its open and my husband comes in with a spoon and says "Now this is the kind of ice cream I like! It's icy and just reminds me of ice cream from when I was a kid (those years before premium ice cream was discovered by Sir Ben & Jerry)!" It is hard to truly give my opinion as we tried it after hours of the ball being in my freezer and the reality is you are supposed to eat it 20 minutes after shaking it yourself to get it to freeze. It should be a soft serve consistency but was slightly hardened when we got to it so I will wait to give you my true review when I can experience it as it should be.

I can't tell you how excited I am to be able to make this while camping. The kids are going to love it as will the adults I am sure. Stay tuned for Part Two...The Mega Ball goes Camping.

Chicago's Luxury Ice Cream Festival - July 30/31

Okay so we're cutting it close on this event but if you happen to be in the Chicago area this weekend you must check this out. It's on Friday and Saturday July 30 & 31st from 7-10pm. We at Scoopalicious rave about our own hometown all you can eat festival, Scooper Bowl, but it looks like Chicago is showing us some serious competition with their Luxury Ice Cream Festival. Now the two festivals definitely have a different take...main stream brands on a city plaza with lots of kids, music and fun and the other is artisan flavors in a chic museum, The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, under the stars with beer and wine. Each I love for different reasons. Who doesn't love watching kids eat as many scoops as they want and being able to do the same with fun music and tourists buzzing all around. But I do have to say a night out in a cool museum with cocktails and micro-creamery ice cream sounds pretty darn good too. 

Tickets are $25 for 25 tasting stations of various ice cream, gelato, chocolatiers, pastry chefs, and more. For a night out that's not too shabby especially when there was also a grilling section on a rooftop terrace of a Nature Museum with beer and wine tastings too!


I am not all familiar with these chefs but you might be if you are from that area....go check out Gino Bahena, Michelle Garcia, Christine McCabe's cool creations, plus artisan ice cream from Black Dog Gelato, Nice Cream, Vosges haut Chocolate, Homer's, Oberweis, Sassy Cow Creamery and many more! 


We'd love to hear more about this. If you happen to end up here this Friday or Saturday please drop us a line and share your experience.


[Scoopalicious is celebrating National Ice Cream month with a Post-A-Day throughout the month of July!]