Ice Cream Pies

My favorite food is ice cream. I never turn down ice cream. Ever.

So, when I got back from a camping trip Sunday afternoon and realized that I needed to have a dessert ready for the 16 people showing up at my house the following evening, what did I do? I fell back to ice cream. I also was looking for an excuse to use my new chest freezer, and, while flipping through my Joy of Cooking cookbook (sidenote: this is NOT the most effective way to find a recipe, at all. Joy of Cooking isn't exactly very "browsable") I got the idea for an ice cream pie. I mean, why not? Ice cream is my favorite food, pie is my favorite thing to cook, and I now have room in a freezer to let the dessert freeze properly!

Because I didn't trust myself to make a good crumb crust- I've had mixed results- I went out and bought 2 crusts, a half-gallon of vanilla ice cream, peanuts, and caramel & fudge topping. I was ready for this experiment!

Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Pie
1 chocolate crumb pie crust (made from Oreos, or store-bought)
1/3 C chocolate chips
1/4 Gallon ice cream softened (I used vanilla, but cookies & cream or any chocolate/vanilla flavor would be good)
Fudge topping (NOT Hot Fudge topping.)

Spread chocolate chips on the bottom of the pie crust, reserving a few for garnish. Spread ice cream in the pie crust. Freeze until hardened (a couple hours). Spread fudge topping* on top of pie, garnish with remaining chocolate chips. Freeze until ready to serve. Refrigerate right before serving, for 30 minutes to an hour.

* If you heat the fudge topping before spreading it, it will melt the top layer of ice cream and will just slide around the top of the pie. The same thing will happen if you try to spread it on top of softened ice cream. I can speak from experience on both counts.

 Not to be outdone, I made a second pie, because just one ice cream pie was not going to stretch among the 12 or so people eating it.

Caramel Nut Ice Cream Pie
1 graham cracker pie crust (homemade or store-bought)
1/2 C crushed peanuts*
1/4 Gallon ice cream softened (I used vanilla)
Caramel topping


Spread nuts on the bottom of the pie crust, reserving a few for garnish. Spread ice cream in the pie crust. Freeze until hardened (a couple hours). Spread caramel topping (see note above). on top of pie, garnish with remaining nuts. Freeze until ready to serve. Refrigerate right before serving, for 30 minutes to an hour.


* Because it was less expensive, I bought a can of unsalted peanuts and ran them through a food processor till they were sufficiently pulverized

I got compliments on both of these, and just have one lone piece left in the freezer after the get-together. Alas, it is the Caramel Nut variety, and my husband is allergic to nuts...

Pumpkin Ice Cream

I've been scanning food blogs over the last week, and have seen recipe after recipe for what to do with leftover turkey. Well, leftover turkey wasn't a problem around here. My mom just cooked turkey breasts rather than an entire turkey, and the meat is gone. The dilemma was an unusual one to have- we had leftover pie. I made a pumpkin pie last weekend for just the two of us, and we ate a couple pieces here or there- but them I cooked another pie for the family Thanksgiving meal, and the pumpkin pie hasn't been touched since. What to do with most-of-a-week-old-pie in the refrigerator? I saw a recipe for Pumpkin Ice cream, and, after looking at the ingredients, decided I could use the old pie innards to make ice cream. (To be honest, I love ice cream, and had been looking for an excuse to use my ice cream maker.)

So, I did a rare thing: I went out & bought an ingredient specifically for a recipe: heavy cream (or "whipping cream". They're the same thing.) I never have this on hand, or, if I try to keep it on hand, it goes bad before I get around to using it. Lesson learned.

Anyway, here's my leftover-pumpkin-pie ice cream recipe. I'm probably the only person ON THE PLANET who has or ever will have leftover pumpkin pie, but, here it goes:

2 C heavy cream (whipping cream)
1 C milk
1-1 1/3 C pumpkin pie filling (Yes, I actually just scooped this out of the pie slices sitting in my refrigerator.)
1/2 C sugar

Mix all ingredients and dump them in an ice cream maker. Let it run for 20-25 minutes. If desired, in the last 5 minutes, pour chopped pie crust in the mix (I didn't do this, but thought about it. I think it would work.) Serve immediately or freeze for 2+ hours for a firmer consistency.

I was really excited about how this turned out. It looked like ice cream! And sometimes homemade ice cream doesn't! AND- it tastes like pumpkin pie! There were serious doubts voiced that it might not have very much flavor, since I totally made up the recipe out of (pretty much) nothing.

Ice Cream Cake

A couple weeks ago, the summer '07 edition of the advertisement/recipe magazine Kraft Food and Family came in the mail. The pictures are bright and colorful, and I am absolutely certain I could never get any of the recipes to look as good as the pictures. That said, one recipe looked too good NOT to try, so I did. I made it tonight to take to a get-together tomorrow, and the best part- it involved my favorite food: Ice Cream.

This "ice cream cake" is a bit of a cop-out - it's actually just a bunch of ice cream sandwiches stacked on top of each other, with a fudge filling between the layers. With my limited freezer space, however, it works for me.

See the recipe on Kraft's site.

1/2 cup hot fudge topping, warmed
1 tub (8 oz.) COOL WHIP Whipped Topping, thawed, divided
1 pkg. (4-serving size) Chocolate Flavor Instant Pudding & Pie Filling
8 Chocolate Sandwich Cookies, chopped (about 1 cup)
12 vanilla ice cream sandwiches, unwrapped

Pour fudge topping into medium bowl. Add 1 cup of the whipped topping; stir with wire whisk until well blended. Add dry pudding mix; stir 2 min. or until well blended. Gently stir in chopped cookies; set aside.

Arrange 4 of the ice cream sandwiches, side-by-side, on 24-inch-long piece of foil; top with half of the whipped topping mixture. Repeat layers. Top with remaining 4 ice cream sandwiches.

Frost top and sides of dessert with remaining whipped topping. This wasn't easy, especially as the 'whipped topping' started melting. Bring up foil sides. Double fold top and ends to loosely seal packet.

Freeze at least 4 hours before serving. Store leftover dessert in freezer.

I can't wait to try this tomorrow! I love ice cream cake. It's a family tradition to have ice cream cakes for birthdays- perhaps now it will be a tradition to have HOMEMADE ice cream cakes. Someday I'll make a more proper ice-cream cake, when I have more freezer space.

When Life Gives You Strawberries

Originally published at Keeping feet on 8/16/2006

I mentioned earlier that my sister and her boyfriend came over for fondue last weekend. My sister was in charge of bringing fruit for dessert, to dip in the chocolate fondue, and she brought some very good strawberries and pineapple. While we were eating however, we forgot about over half of the fruit (but that was OK- we were stuffed and barely finished what we had out!) so, come Monday, I had a large container of pineapple and a pint of strawberries left over. I went to pack the fruit in my lunch for Monday and noticed that the strawberries were on the verge of going bad.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, they say. So what did I do?

I came home during lunch Monday and used the strawberries, our Pampered Chef food chopper, and our handy-dandy ice cream maker to make some beautiful, no-artificial-colors-or-flavors strawberry ice cream!



I followed the directions in the ice cream maker manual and it actually turned out a little too sweet. No complaints, though.

Now I have to figure out what to do with the pineapple. I used about a third of it as a topping for the ham steaks Josh grilled us last night, and that was good, but I still have a decent amount more. Any ideas?