My family started a tradition for celebrating my mom’s birthday each December by doing a Traveling Dinner.
Each family member hosts a course of the meal and you go from house to house and eat at each one.
My mom decided to make this her Birthday thing because she didn’t want to cook dinner for her own Birthday ( makes sense I guess) and so that she could come to both my house and my sister’s and see all our Christmas decorations up.
This year I was assigned dessert.
Weird, huh? I am assigned dessert every where I go.
Anyway, I was going to make a peppermint Chocolate Cheesecake because what I really wanted to make was this amazing white chocolate coconut cake but my mom and I are the only ones who like coconut.
So cheesecake was the next best thing… but Dad doesn’t like cheesecake.
SO, back to the drawing board.
This is when Steve gave me a ring from Omaha where he was for work and told me he had just gone out to Sushi and for dessert they had the most delicious fried ice cream and I would have loved it.
Isn’t that sweet?
He called to tell me that I would have liked it if I had been there, but I wasn’t so he enjoyed it for me.
**Also I would like to note that he did NOT have the sushi like his coworkers.
Which I think was a very good decision considering he was in Nebraska.
I can’t image the raw fish there is nearly as fresh as Seattle.
I decided I would try and make my own and serve it for the Birthday dessert.
Since you have to fry it to order basically, I had to spend time in the kitchen doing my final prep and frying but I guess if you aren’t going to do something time consuming and tedious for a family dinner at your own house, when are you going to do it?
Here is the final Product
I started by baking a loaf of pound cake earlier that week.
When I was ready to make my sandwiches I sliced it with bread knife and layed it out flat on a cookie sheet.
Remember you will need 2 slices for each person.
Next I melted some chocolate chips to use as glue for my ice cream sandwiches.
Then I unwrapped frozen Klondike bars and cut them in half.
I took one slice of cake and smeared a little melted chocolate onto it, then laid the frozen klondike bar half on it, followed by another slice of cake with melted chocolate.
The melted chocolate instantly sets up when it comes in contact with the cold ice cream bar and holds the cake on both sides of it.
The cake will help insulate and protect the ice cream and keep it from melting in the fryer.
Then I put them back into the freezer while I heated the Oil and made my dipping batter.
You could do these the day ahead too and save yourself the trouble and also ensure they are frozen as solid as possible.
Then all you would have to do is dip and fry.
For the batter I used some Krusteaz pancake mix and added enough water to make it the consistency I wanted.
This is really trial and error and depends also on how hot your oil is.
I believe mine was at 350.
I wanted it thick enough to adhere to the sides and protect the gap but thin enough to cook quickly in the hot oil.
I also added a little sugar to sweeten the batter along with some vanilla extract, cinnamon and Panko bread crumbs for crunch.
Make sure to set them onto a paper towel for a few second to drain any excess oil when you remove from the fryer before plating. ( Like bacon)
Out of the pan and into the Fryer
( Haha , see what I did there?)
I did them one at a time so that I could plate it up immediately and hand it out.
This worked best with 2 people in an assembly line.
Steve dipped and fried.
I plated and served.
On top of the deep fried ice cream I drizzled some Fleur de Sel Caramel Sauce( Trader Joes) and Birthday sprinkles!
If I do this again I would change two things.:
I would cut my cake slices thinner, so that you would get more crunchy batter and cold ice cream taste and less cake.
It took away from the unusual paring a little bit in my opinion.
I would also not add my Panko to the batter.
I would dip the sandwich in the batter and then roll or sprinkle it with the Panko so that the flakes stay on the outside.
They lost their crunch a little in the batter and didn’t serve their purpose as well as I had hoped.
All in all , it was a success, especially for brainstorming the recipe in my head and making it happen!