Dessert Mashup: Millionaire's Shortbread Ice-Cream (Egg and Wheat Free)

Yes, you read that correctly: an ice-cream interpretation of the delicious combination of caramel, biscuit, and chocolate. And here she is, in all her fatteningly glorious splendour!

I'm not exactly sure how this came to mind. I like translating desserts, and last year I made a delicious tiramisù ice-cream (which I will hopefully recreate for an upcoming blog), and I thought doing a dessert mashup for millionaire's shortbread would also be delicious.

This recipe is incredible simple. I used my caramel ice-cream recipe, adding an extra few pinches of salt to give it that salted caramel flavour that's so in vogue at the moment, and swirled some broken up shortbread and chocolate syrup through it.

For the shortbread, I baked a very small batch of the traditional 1:2:3 (sugar:butter:flour) shortbread recipe, using half an ounce per part (if that makes sense...), making it very flat for crumbling.

For the chocolate sauce, I melted together one part dark chocolate to four parts golden syrup, adding in a little salt for flavour. It goes fairly firm on freezing, but is absolutely delicious served warm over the ice-cream.

To make the swirl, I filled the freezing tub as follows: layer of ice-cream, layer of crumbles, layer of ice-cream, layer of chocolate sauce, etc., until I ran out of ice-cream. Excess sauce and crumbles can be used for decorating on serving the ice-cream. I then swirled it all up with the blade of a table knife. I popped it in the freezer to freeze overnight.

As with any ice-cream, it needed to be left on the kitchen counter to temper so it was scoopable, but it is absolutely delicious. I still have some in the freezer, and I'm permitting myself a scoop every few days. I've been so good over the last two weeks: I've lost 5 and a half pounds!

Viennese Whirls (Wheat Free)

I've been in a bit of a baking funk these last few weeks. I suffer badly from mood swings, and sometimes I get stuck in ruts for weeks at a time, and my baking and pretty much everything else suffers for it.

But do you know what is guaranteed to make me feel instantly better? Afternoon tea treats. Even just looking at them makes me instantaneously joyous. As such I recently went to the shop and coveted the Mr Kipling section. I love Mr Kipling cakes so much, especially the French Fancies, but unfortunately he doesn't make gluten free versions because he's a dietist!

So, I thought I'd see if I could make my own versions of his classics! This is a recipe for the basic biscuit of the Viennese Whirls. The Mr Kipling version is sandwiched with chewy jam and buttercream, but when you make them yourself you can sandwich them with anything you like, including my most recent pash orange chocolate spread.

FREE FROM
☑ Soya (check for soya lecithin)
☑ Yeast
☑ Wheat
☑ Eggs

CONTAINS
☒ Gluten
☒ Dairy (use ingredients in italics for a dairy-free version)
☒ Refined sugar products

INGREDIMENTS:

• 4 ounces (115 grammes) butter or block margarine
• 2 ounces (55 grammes) icing sugar
• 4 ounces (115 grammes) white spelt flour or gluten-free plain flour with xanthan gum
• 1 ounce (30 grammes) cornflour
• 1 to 2 teaspoons of water, if needed

HOW TO

• Preheat your oven to 180°C (350°F, Gas Mk.4, or moderate). Line one or two baking trays with non-stick baking paper.
• In a mixing bowl, beat the butter or margarine until smooth and creamy, then beat in the icing sugar.
• Add in the cornflour, and beat again until smooth. Add in the spelt flour, and beat until
  it becomes a thick mixture.
•  If the mixture looks too thick to pipe, add a teaspoon or so of water and mix again, however add no more than 2 teaspoons of water in total.
• Using a ½ inch (1 centimeter) closed star nozzle, pipe little rosettes, about an inch (2½ centimeters) apart. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until lightly browned.
• Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely before either eating or sandwiching with jam, if wanted.

And there you have it! Go on, give this recipe a whirl! (cue, badum-dum-tsh!)