Coming in just under the wire, I’ve got one more contribution to #PokeNOM September to throw into the ring! If you haven’t checked out the main post about #PokeNOM over at The Gluttonous Geek, get on it! The full list of submitted recipes is here, and it contains a lot of awesome. We’re doing themed recipe months regularly now over at Fandom Foodies, and it’s massively fun. Look forward to next month’s theme: Burtoween! Remember that anyone can participate; you don’t need to have a blog! I hope to see some of you baking along!
These little ice cream cakes are a little cruel and a lot cute. Why cruel? Well… let’s just say cutting them can feel a little violent. Never fear, reader, one taste and you’ll surely be happy you sacrificed a jigglypuff or two! Well… probably.
JIGGLYPUFF ICE CREAM CAKES
Yields: 5 Jigglypuffs.
Timing notes: This involves lots of freezing, so starting a day ahead is advised.
No-Churn Strawberry Ice Cream
400g (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
500ml (2 cups) heavy whipping cream
500ml (2 cup) freeze dried strawberries
100g (~2/3 cup) frozen strawberries
Citric acid or lemon juice (optional)
1. Place the frozen berries in a small saucepan and cook on low heat while stirring constantly until the berries have broken down and much of the liquid has cooked off, about 10 minutes. You want something like a berry syrup. Stir in the freeze dried berries and allow them to sit for 10 minutes to absorb some moisture.
2. In a blender, combine the condensed milk, freeze dried berries and berry syrup and blend until very smooth. Taste the mixture. If it’s too sweet, add a pinch of citric acid or a teaspoon of lemon juice and taste it again. Empty the strawberry base into a bowl and allow it to chill in the fridge for about 20 minutes.
3. In a large bowl, whip the cream to soft peaks. Gently fold 1/3 of the cream into the strawberry mixture to soften it up some. Now fold in the remaining cream, and your ice cream is ready to be frozen! See ASSEMBLY.
Chocolate Crunch
350ml (1 1/2 cups) rice krispies cereal or fuielletine
175ml (3/4 cup) melted dark chocolate
1. Fold together and use immediately. See ASSEMBLY.
ASSEMBLY
15 oz candy coating or tempered white chocolate
Oil-based or powdered pink food coloring (NOT liquid or water-based gel)
Fist-sized amount of fondant or modeling chocolate
Blue, red and brown food coloring
Corn syrup
1. First, wipe down your sphere molds to make sure they’re clean. Using the pink coloring, carefully dye all your white chocolate to a pale pink. Using a brush or clean finger, coat the cavities of the mold with a thin layer of white chocolate. Flip the molds upside down onto some parchment paper and freeze for 5 minutes or until firmed up. Don’t worry about it being too perfect, but freezing them upside down is important, or else the edges of the spheres will be too thin.
2. Take the spheres out of the freezer and apply another thin coat of chocolate to cover any thin spots. Use a knife to level off the tops of the mold (as seen below) and place the mold upside down on parchment paper again to firm up in the freezer.
3. Once the chocolate has set, fill your spheres 3/4 of the way up with ice cream base, leveling things off a bit with a spoon. Return to freezer for 2 hours or until entirely (or at least mostly!) frozen. In the meantime, transfer your remaining melted pink chocolate into a measuring cup. Measure out 1/4 of the chocolate’s volume in corn syrup and fold it in just until the chocolate siezes up into a mass. Don’t keep stirring it to get it smooth – once it siezes, stop. This is now chocolate clay! Turn it out onto saran wrap and flatten it into kind of a pancake shape. Wrap it up and allow to cool on your counter for 1 hour.
4. Place a cookie sheet over an oven burner and heat it just until the burner has made the sheet warm. Now, scoop about 1 tbsp of the chocolate crunch filling into the spheres and press it relatively flat. While the chocolate crunch is still soft, pop the spheres out of the mold. Take 2 spheres and place them seam-side down onto the warmed cookie sheet to just barely melt the edges. This will take 5 seconds at most if the sheet is hot enough. Now join the halves together, holding it just until the chocolate re-firms and attaches the halves. Do this one sphere at a time. Don’t worry about it being totally perfect; you can touch things up later. Return the spheres to the freezer to set completely.
5. Give the chocolate clay a quick knead to work out any lumps. Using the sphere mold as a size guide (or some of the actual spheres, provided you move things to the freezer if they warm up too much), use the chocolate clay to make the facial features. 2 small balls for the feet, two little tapered cone shapes for the arms, a big swirled cone shape for the tuft and 2 triangles for the ears. Do this for all the jigglypuffs. If at any point the chocolate clay becomes too soft to use, simply place it in the fridge for a couple of minutes to firm it up again.
6. Pinch off a piece of fondant the size of a large grape and color it blue. Now pinch off a piece the size of a golf ball and color it brown. Pinch off a very small piece and color it red. Keep a golf ball sized chunk white.
7. Roll out the white fondant and use the base of a Wilton #116 piping tip (or similarly sized cutter) to cut out the whites of the eyes. Roll out the blue fondant very thinly and cut out a smaller circle using the top of an Ateco #807 tip or similarly sized cutter. Adhere it to the whites with a dab of water. Now use a straw to cut out even smaller white circles and adhere those to the whites. Make 2 eyes for each cake.
8. Using the brown fondant, make mouths! Use tiny curled ropes for smiles, or roll them out and cut out a cone shape for open mouthed smiles. If you do an open mouth, roll and adhere a tiny dab of red fondant onto these to make a tongue. Have fun with this! Every face I made was different.
9. Inspect your ice cream spheres and use chocolate clay to fill in any bare spots along the seams. Arrange the feet of the jigglypuff 1″ apart on your serving plates and press the ice cream balls onto it. This will keep it from rolling around! Using a bit of water, attach all the other body parts.
10. Done! Keep frozen until it’s time to serve, and watch out for rogue jigglypuffs avenging their brethren.
IN THIS ENTRY (affiliate links):
The FnF post is up: here.
(Really cute cake balls!!!!!!)
What a great roundup! Thanks, Debra!