What to do with melted ice cream?
Managing food waste is a huge part of being a responsible householder. Therefore, we would always recommend finding a way to use up any food that might be about to spoil. If you have melted ice cream, for example, you might not want to refreeze it – because of safety concerns as well as taste and texture issues.
In this article, we’re going to run through a few of our favorite uses for melted ice cream that prevent it from being needlessly thrown away.
Buttermilk
Buttermilk is a wonderful ingredient in any number of baked goods. It’s usually made by combining milk and lemon juice to create an extremely quick and basic cream-cheese style liquid. It tastes very mild and creamy and is only slightly acidic.
The acid content of the liquid is used to activate baking soda in a number of recipes where adding straight vinegar or lemon juice would negatively affect the taste.
Melted ice cream has a slight acid quality to it thanks to the addition of a number of ingredients during the making process. Therefore, it makes a wonderfully simple and quick additive to a number of baked recipes, leading to a tasty way to use up excess ingredients.
Creme Anglaise
Creme Anglaise is something that doesn’t get too much of a look in among any culture’s cuisine other than traditional French. Essentially, it’s a basic French sauce that’s made from cream, eggs, vanilla, and sugar. It’s typically used in patisserie, or to make desserts sweeter and richer.
The basic recipe for creme Anglaise is similar to the custard base of ice cream. Therefore, if you’ve got some melted ice cream on hand, you can be sure to use it on top of another dish – it will work as a wonderful topping, as well as a sweet additive to any number of dishes.
French Toast
French toast is a great breakfast – sweet, luxurious, and infinitely moreish! Typically, it’s made with an egg and milk mixture that’s sweetly seasoned to bring joy to stale bread. Instead of creating that alternative mix, why not use melted ice cream?
The rich, thick flavors of ice cream will ill the bread with a powerful set of flavors, and it’s a unique breakfast experience. For your next brunch, give it a go! If you were cooking this for someone in the hopes of being quite cute, then you could replace the traditional French toast accompaniment of maple syrup with ice cream sauces – such as strawberry or lime. It would be a cute nod to your alternative ingredients which would truly work with the final dish!
To experiment a little, you could try ice creams flavored in different ways. The place to draw the line, though, is mix-ins. They won’t cook properly in french toast, so avoid them in your sweet brunch routine.