You Must Make This Ice Cream Without Whipping.
I recently wrote about the best summer technique for making pop tarts – freezing them – and it didn’t seem to be cold enough for Lifehacker readers. Frozen Pop-Tarts are deliciously cool but never freeze to ice. This makes it difficult for ice cream to compete for the top spot in an imaginary ranking of cold summer desserts.
But we’re lovers, not fighters, so instead of pitting cookies and ice cream against each other, many of you have suggested joining forces.
It didn’t take me long to convince me that this was a fantastic idea. The concept is self-explanatory: ice cream is good, and pop tarts are good too, so mixing them together should be great. While you can stick to tradition and eat your tartlets toasted and alone, or you can eat your ice cream bare, why not embrace the hedonistic joy of having too much of a good thing?
The beauty is how simple it is. If I want Pop-Tart ice cream, I’m probably not in the mood for 30 minutes of steaming over a steaming custard pan so I can wait another six hours for it to churn and then set. I want cold creamy nostalgia and I want it fast. The following method of making ice cream without whipping is much easier and faster than the traditional method of making ice cream with whipping. The hardest part will be choosing which flavor of pop tart you want.
How to Make Pop-Tart Ice Cream Without Whipping
The ingredient lists for no-whipping ice cream on the internet are very similar. They usually require heavy cream and condensed milk with drops of vanilla extract added. I started with a no-whipped vanilla ice cream recipe from the Food Network and made adjustments from there.
I tried this recipe in two batches, one with red velvet and one with strawberry flavored pop tarts. In the red velvet round, I found Food Network’s cream to condensed milk ratio too sweet. It didn’t help that I added a grocery snack equivalent to dough candy. With that in mind, I adjusted the ratio for the batch of strawberries.
The result was exactly what I wanted Pop Tart ice cream to be: creamy, cold, and sprinkled with breakfast dough pieces. A 15-minute soak allows the dough pieces to become soft but not mushy, and colorful microcrumbs are added to the creamy base. After I strained the cream, I left these softened pieces so that they can be folded later. In the middle of the freeze time, I added the soaked pieces to the ice cream along with the fresh ones, and I’m happy I did. The texture was better for this. Some pieces of dough were soft, emphasizing the extra chewy filling, while others retained the crunch of their frosting.
Foolishly, I added two and a half strawberry tartlets to the second serving, and the only thing I would do differently next time would be to add the other half.
Ice cream Pop-Tart without whipping
Ingredients:
- 3 cups heavy cream
- 14 oz can of condensed milk
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 3 or 4 single pop tarts (break into pieces and halve)
- Spray (optional)
In a medium bowl, mix heavy cream with half of the broken pieces of pop tart. Let them soak for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, combine condensed milk, vanilla and salt in a medium bowl.
Strain the cream into a bowl and save the softened pop tarts for later. Whip cream on medium speed until stiff peaks form, about 2 minutes. (You can also do it manually, but it will take some time and energy.)
Take a quarter of the whipped cream and stir it into the condensed milk. Keep doing this through the block. After blending (a few small lumps are fine), pour the mixture into a bread pan and cover with a piece of foil. Place it in the freezer for about an hour.
After about an hour, the ice cream will set around the edges. Scrape off the hardened edges and lightly press them into the center. Spread the soaked pop tart pieces, fresh pieces, and topping over the ice cream and carefully dip them into the bread pan. Return to the freezer until completely frozen, about two more hours. Serve in a bowl or cone, or become a real sugar MVP and place a scoop between two more tartlets.