Ice cream is my family’s all-time favorite dessert. We regularly go out for premium flavors, and keep our freezer stocked, all year around. It’s fun, and our special little-something to look forward to. Ice cream shops are a great experience, and grocery stores have decent options, but nothing compares to the easy ice cream upgrades we can make at home with plain/base vanilla or chocolate, to be totally transformed into fancy, super-awesome flavors that are beyond-premium.
Easy ice cream upgrades are something that I love to do for my family. I buy a base flavor and I make individual containers for my sweethearts at home. They love it because it is set aside just for them, and made with them in-mind. In this post I’m sharing two of the flavors I recently made for my two favorite guys: Chocolate Fudge Brownie for my son, and Blueberry Cobbler Ice Cream for my husband.
Keep these three tips in mind for upgrading-success: #1: You must use full-fat ice cream or gelato. #2 You must freeze it overnight or for at least 12 hours. #3 Choose items to mix-in that aren’t too hard on your teeth.
Here’s my quick YouTube video for this Chocolate Fudge Brownie upgrade, made especially for my 13 year old son who loves this combination. He’s so cute when he gets all excited about his food favorites. His joy about it makes me extra-happy.
If you’d like to make any of my dessert recipes to make these toppings happen, I have you fully-covered! You can link to any of my three brownie recipes found here: decadent brownies, flourless brownies, s’mores brownies. On each of those links or in this blog’s search, you’ll find my recipes for the different ways I make ganache. The easiest one-cup ganache recipe is found here.
Whether choosing a vegan or classic type of ice cream, it does not matter for this wonderful trick. Like many other wonderful foods, this dessert is about chemistry and good old fashioned fat – the kind of fat that makes things taste really good, and hold up beautifully.
The reason why low fat, sorbet, or frozen yogurt varieties will not work, is because you’re asking the product to melt and then re-freeze, and these products will not refreeze successfully. Full-fat products will melt, re-freeze and scoop easily without any compromising to the end-result whatsoever. The good, higher-calorie options will be the way to go for upgrading boring vanilla or chocolate (or anything you can dream up) into upgraded, ice cream-awesomeness.
Now, let’s talk Blueberry Cobbler ice cream. Just like in the You Tube video of me putting this flavor together, I give full credit to Handel’s ice cream in San Diego for this flavor idea. My husband tried it there, and was crazy about it.
Of course, my version of Blueberry Cobbler ice cream, made with boring vanilla and my easy-cobbler cake at home, was totally hooked-up and a little over the top compared to the ice cream shop. With his own little container, he was stoked to find it waiting for him after dinner or anytime he wanted a taste, and raved about it for days. You can easily make this just the same, and as-amazing. Link here to my fruit cobbler recipe.
Here’s my easy “recipe” (more like how-to) for how to make this happen so that your freezer at home can be stocked with all the fancy, upgraded flavors you can dream-up.
easy ice cream upgrades
Ingredients
- 2 cups ice cream – vanilla or chocolate Must be full-fat ice cream or gelato – cannot be low fat or juice-based.
- Any amount of brownie, cookie crumble, syrup . . . anything you can dream up to add in that is not too hard to bite into.
Instructions
- Take full-fat ice cream and gelato and melt enough that you want to work with – not totally – just enough so that it is easy to mix.
- For chocolate-brownie-fudge, add in cut up brownies and melted ganache.
- Pour these ingredients into a container and add more toppings.
- Freeze overnight – at least 12 hours, and scoop to your heart's content. Because the base is real ice cream, it will re-freeze properly and scoop nicely, as if it never melted in the first place.
- Now you have upgraded premium ice cream scooped at home, with all the yummy chunks and flavor you want, frozen into the ice cream, just like you would enjoy if you were at an exclusive ice cream shop.
- Here's an example of Blueberry Cobbler Ice Cream.
Video
Enjoy summertime. I hope you take care.
