Cassata Ice Cream Cake. This ice cream as its made from egg whites, caster sugar and cream, and I add nuts and dried fruit, cherries, etc for color.
Ingredients
- 6 egg whites, room temperature
- 100g (125ml) caster sugar
- 500ml cream
- 100g (250ml) chopped nuts (use different nuts, for texture and taste)
- 250g (400ml) cake mix (dried fruit)
- 250g Red and green cherries
Method:
- Line an interesting bread pan or plastic container (must be able to go into the freezer) with glad wrap.
- Whip the egg whites in a dry metal bowl till frothy and dry.
- Add bit by bit half of the caster sugar to the egg whites, keep on beating till it forms stiff peaks. Set aside.
- Whip the cream and the remaining caster sugar in a separate bowl till stiff peaks.
- Gently fold in the cream by using a metal spoon into the egg whites.
- Add the nut, fruit, and cherries and ever so gently fold them into the first mixture.
- You can decorate as you prefer.
- In the bottom of your container, you can place some cherries, nuts, and dried fruit, or even malt chocolate balls, or just skip this and scoop the cassata mixture into the mold.
- Place in the freezer till hard as ice cream. Take the cassata out of the freezer, say a ½-1 hour before serving, and leave it in the fridge, in order to thaw slightly.
- Invert it onto a serving platter and remove the glad wrap.
- You can now again decorate as you want.
- Use finely chopped nuts and add a thin strip around the cassata at the very bottom of the serving dish. If you did not use cherries on nuts in the bottom of the container, you can now decorate with cherries, or as I have done, I melted approximately 4-6 blocks of chocolate in the microwave and drizzle it over the top in any nice pattern.
- Dish up in slices. It can also be served with any sauce or just on its own.
- This year, I added the following just to do something different:
- I crushed a bag of mint chocolate cookies and added ½ block of mint crisp chocolate, cut it up into fine chunks and mixed that, and scooped it over the top of the cassata before placing it in the freezer, which once served, formed the bottom of the cassata cake.
Source: Old Huisgenoot cookbook, but modified by Esme Slabs
