Fried Ice Cream

When I was little we lived near Tulsa, OK. We would meet our cousins at the mall and then go out for lunch at Casa Bonita, the best Mexican restaurant EVER! I mean, I was young, so it was probably teeming with disease and dirty silverware, but you could eat inside a cave!!! Seriously, a cave. And there was a waterfall and a puppet show, and they served sopapillas with honey at every meal. Bliss. Every now and then one of us would order fried ice cream and share. It was the best combination of texture and temperature. Crunchy and warm on the outside and cold and creamy on the inside. When Hallie and I decided to do a week of posts for Cinco de Mayo, I knew I had to try to recreate it.

I found various recipes but settled on one from "Simply So Good". The recipe calls for ice cream, cereal, coconut, cinnamon, milk, eggs, and oil. All things I already had in my house, so we were ready to roll. I found recipes that called for frosted flakes or just the plain corn flakes and then added sugar. Also some recipes substituted nuts or ground cookies for the coconut. This is a recipe where you can adjust to your tastes. Always nice. I scaled down the ingredients for our family.

My ingredients
4 1/2 cup scoops of ice cream (I used vanilla)
3 cups frosted flakes
1 cup shredded coconut
1/2 tbsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1 tbsp milk
Oil for frying

First, line a pan or plate with wax paper and have it ready to load with the ice cream balls. Scoop out about a half a cup servings and place onto pan. I made sure they were roughly in the shape of a ball, but didn't get too over excited about it. I would be rolling them in cereal later and knew I could correct the shape at that point. These melt fast, so work quickly and then place in freezer to harden.

While you're waiting, crush your cereal and add your coconut and cinnamon and place on a plate. Beat your eggs and milk.

The recipe says to leave the balls in the freezer for an hour, but mine were in for over four hours, and were fine. I didn't think The Princess would be able to help with this stage so I waited until nap time. I let them sit for a minute to allow the cereal mixture to adhere to them better. Roll the balls in the cereal mixture to coat, then into the egg mix and then again into the cereal. At this point you can improve the shape. Once coated and shaped, place them back onto pan and return to freezer. As you can see, I coated the bottom of my pan with the cereal mixture just to make sure the bottom of the balls didn't lose their coating while in the pan. Freeze for several hours or until very firm if making same day. I froze mine overnight.

When you are ready to prepare make sure to have your serving dishes, spoons, and topping ready. These cook very quickly. Heat your oil in a pot to 365 degrees (I used a small saucepan and cooked one at a time so that I didn't have to use so much oil). They will fry for only 20-30 seconds. I didn't sit mine on paper towels to drain because I was nervous they would stick, but I worked with a slotted spoon and then held them over the paper towel before placing bowl. The outside was crunchy and the inside was still pretty solid and cold. We didn't top ours with anything , but you could add honey, caramel or chocolate sauce. At Casa Bonita they were drizzled with honey. They also came with a mariachi band...so it was hard to compete, but these were very very good.

For full recipe, check out Simply So Good here

Bryn