Nigella's Ice Cream Cake with Butterscotch Sauce

We had friends round last Sunday for lunch and I wanted to make a dessert, and I also wanted to make a cake, but thought we probably wouldn’t have wanted to eat both – so this ice cream cake in Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Express seemed the perfect compromise.

 

 

Her recipe is quite brief and this is one of those wonderful desserts where you can substitute all sorts of ingredients, which I did. It also gave me the chance to try out a new cake mould.

 

 

You need about 1.5 litres of ice cream- that will probably serve 8 or more – but I would actually recommend adjusting the quantity depending on the serving bowl you intend to use and adjusting the other ingredients accordingly.

 

I used a plain vanilla ice cream – Carte d’Or, which was very creamy and rich – and I think using a relatively plain flavour would be better (as you are going to add things to it) but really you could use any flavour.

 

Take the ice cream out of the freezer and allow to soften until it is a consistency you can mix with a spoon.

 

Take 200g chocolate chips, or any sort of chocolate/sweets/candy that goes with the flavour ice cream you have chosen – for instance you could use fudge chunks mixed in with toffee ice cream (there’s a good idea!). I used mini Hershey’s kisses which were basically chocolate chips. Mix in to the ice cream.

  

Next break up 150g of bourbon biscuits – but again, you could use something else. Finally bash up two Crunchie bars, and add the biscuit and the Crunchie to the ice cream mixture and stir again.

 

 

Spoon into your mould and return to the freezer to set.

 

 

About ten minutes before you are ready to eat the dessert, take the ice cream out of the fridge and make the butterscotch sauce. Place 45g light brown sugar and 2 tbsp granulated sugar in a small pan, along with 150g golden syrup and 30g butter. Heat, stirring, until the butter has melted. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes, then add 125ml double cream. Take off the heat and stir well. Serve as a hot sauce over the ice cream – it was a delicious addition.

 

I received this silicon cake mould for Christmas – it is a flower shape so looks pretty when served as a whole but the clever thing is that if you cut each slice in the right place, every slice comes out as a perfect heart shape!

 

 

So this is a lovely mould to use for Valentine’s day. For that reason I’m sharing this with Alphabakes, the blog challenge I’m hosting this month, as the letter is V.

 

 

 

I am also sending this to the Food Year Linkup, a challenge I’ve just come across which celebrates various calendar events so this is perfect for Valentine’s day. The challenge is hosted by Charlotte at My Recipe Book.

 

 

Over at Treat Petite, love is in the air- that is their theme this month – so I am also sending them my heart-shaped ice cream cake. The challenge is hosted this month by Kat at the Baking Explorer and in alternate months, Stuart at Cakeyboi.

 

 

  

The theme for Love Cake is ‘for the love of cake’ and Nigella does call this an ice cream cake, so I am (slightly cheekily) submitting it to Ness at JibberJabberUK.