Pants Off Embarrassment
What would you do for a chocolate-coated ice cream novelty?
Where I grew up, we played in the woods on a daily basis. Ticks were a huge concern due to the number of diseases they can carry, particularly Lyme. To protect ourselves, we would perform “tick checks” whenever returning from spending time outdoors. We combed through each other’s hair like chimps, seeking tiny stowaways, getting excited when we found freckles, moles, and infrequently, an actual tick. Yuck.
There was an improvised path through the woods behind our house that ran parallel to the road, crossed through our neighbors’ backyards, and landed in an offshoot neighborhood from our own. There were many points of interest to stop and look at along the way: finding a discarded toy or abandoned tree house here and there. When I made these discoveries, I felt like the world’s greatest archaeologist. We would often excavate around fallen trees to find bugs and salamanders, catching a couple critters for observation and then letting them go after much visual scrutiny. We were Indiana Jones and Bill Nye, all at the same time. I want to see that movie. Sony? Paramount? Call me.
One day, after a forest excursion, my brother and I came indoors and started the tick checks. Usually after a thorough inspection of our scalps, we would give each other the clean bill of health, then move on to step two. I would hop in the shower, cleaning off the forest grime and searching the rest of my epidermis for tiny, insectile vampires. While we had done this a hundred times before, occasionally finding a tick on my arm or leg, this day was unfortunately much different.
I was doing my best to clean every part of my body when I felt a small anomaly in a place I had never felt one before. Now, I am not able to see this particular area of my body, but I had touched it for cleaning purposes and knew what to expect. Only for cleaning purposes. I promise. Today, there seemed to be a skin tag where just yesterday there hadn’t been. Realizing skin tags take a bit longer to form than just a day, I Occam’s razored to the only conclusion possible: Taint tick.
Stepping out of the shower, I was filled with dread. How would I manage to exorcise this invisible demon? I’m sure I didn’t consider as many ideas as I should have before asking my parents. The embarrassment was so strong that I had trouble telling them about my downstairs situation. They slowly coaxed out the details of my anxiety, and tried hard not to laugh at my predicament. I remember that helping for a bit, but my positive attitude disappeared once seated in the operating room. My porcelain gurney and familial surgeons were less than inviting, and at first I refused to “drop trou” and accept their help. In this moment of difficulty, my mom proposed the Great Compromise of 2000. Should I accept the help of my parents at the cost of my embarrassment, they would reward me with a chocolate-coated ice cream novelty.
After some teetering, I relented. I pulled my pants down, pulled other things up, and showed my parents my tick. After even more waffling, I let my dad tweeze this penile pest from my underside, and got out of there with my face redder than the devil. I went downstairs to the freezer to grab my hard-earned reward, and enjoyed that sweet chocolate-vanilla combination with the embarrassment of the past behind me. From that day forward, I stopped being quite so embarrassed about the problems in my life. I had achieved big tick energy.
Anyways, here’s my recipe for a chocolate-coated ice cream novelty.
Ingredients:
You will need to start by making ice cream, which I taught you last week. Well that’s good, because I am not teaching you again. What? You really need me to say it all over? This generation is so… Ok, fine. I will tell you again but seriously you should have learned it the first time. Way to go. Jerk.
Ice Cream
1 pint (2 cups) Heavy Cream
14 oz can Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 tablespoon Vanilla
Chocolate Coating
8 oz semi sweet chocolate morsels
3 oz refined coconut oil (has less flavor than
Equipment:
Guess what! I never have exactly the right tools. I don’t know if that inspires you, but it should. You will be able to do this with something in your house. I don’t recommend drinking your own bodily fluids, but Bear Grylls said it best: “Improvise, adapt, come over and eat some ice cream.” I think that’s what he said, but I don’t know. I’m not a journalist.
Standing Mixer/Bowl
Second large bowl
Spatula
Freezable square or rectangular container (not glass, something with good corners. I used 2 rectangular bread molds, but a 9”X9” pan is ideal)
Square container (chocolate coating tub)
Small pot
Cutting board
Chef’s knife (or other non serrated knife)
Freezable Pan
Fork
Parchment Paper
Spoon (Optional)
Active prep total: 35 minutes
FREEZE time: 8+ hours
Clean up: 15 minutes
There comes a time in every person’s life where they need to decide if they’re willing to put in the effort to make it to the big leagues. This is that moment. This recipe takes a little elbow grease, finesse, and time management. Put it all together, and you just may make one of the best desserts of your life.
Instructions:
We are starting by making “ice cream.” This isn’t exactly ice cream, but is a perfectly delicious substitute with the correct consistency for this treat. Pour 1 pint of COLD heavy cream into the bowl of your standing mixer. Whip it on a high setting, around 75% of your mixer’s top speed. On my mixer, there is a convenient setting called “whipped cream,” which is the 9th notch out of 12. The speed should almost scare you, but not quite.
As the cream whips, you will notice it firming up to a stage of “soft peaks,” meaning it is capable of holding shape on its own, but still flops a little. I recommend whipping until “stiff peaks,” meaning the cream will hold whatever shape you give it, but BE CAREFUL. It takes very little time to go from soft to stiff peaks, and you can “over whip” the cream, at which point it will lose shape. I will not make jokes about soft and stiff peaks. I know you are already doing that.
If you do over whip your cream, pour in 3 or more tablespoons of heavy cream, and whip again. Make sure to watch it closely!
In your second large bowl, use your spatula to combine the can of sweetened condensed milk, and a tablespoon of vanilla extract. Now comes the tough part.
Add your whipped cream on top of the mixture of vanilla and condensed milk. You have to slowly “fold” the mixture into the whipped cream, mixing in but not breaking the structure of the whipped cream. Remember what you learned from Arthur the aardvark: “Tis a gentle hand ‘twil rule the land.” Arthur should have been a GOAT.
Lay parchment paper in the bottom and sides of your freezable container, then transfer the cream into your container. You want the ice cream height to be between 1 to 2 inches, as this will be the relative thickness of the final treat. You could make them thicker, but remember the chocolate coating will also add thiccness. That is spelled correctly.
This will need to freeze overnight (8+ hours). The ice cream will have to be dunked in molten chocolate, which would be an unmitigated disaster if the ice cream isn’t completely frozen. If it isn’t cold enough, put it back in the freezer, or call Elsa.
Assuming you’ve frozen your ice cream for the requisite amount of time, pull it out and move the ice cream to a cutting surface. Leave the parchment paper in the container! Quickly cut the ice cream into squares around 4-5 inches on any side, return them to the container, and then place it back in the freezer. You can also put your freezable pan in the freezer to precool, which will help keep your final product from melting.
Now it is time to make your chocolate coating! On LOW heat, melt 8 ounces of semi sweet chocolate in the small pot for about 5 minutes until smooth. Next, add in your 3 ounces of refined coconut oil, and stir into a glossy ocean of deliciousness.
Time to set up your workspace. You will want to be able to move the ice cream squares from the container to the chocolate bath and finally to the frozen pan.
First, set out the frozen pan and cover the bottom with parchment paper. I had this on my right side.
Get out your square shaped chocolate tub, and pour the smooth chocolate ocean from the pot into the dunking vessel. I had this directly in front of me. DO NOT overfill the container of chocolate. If you do, dunking the ice cream in will cause the container to overflow. It would be a regrettably delicious disaster.
Retrieve the ice cream squares from the freezer, and place them to the left of the chocolate tub. The order from left to right should be ice cream squares, chocolate tub, chilled pan.
Now for the fun part. Make sure you aren’t wearing your favorite NASA sweatshirt, and get out a fork. Use your fork to lift (from the bottom) a block of ice cream from the container and into the chocolate. The ice cream will be less dense than the chocolate and will naturally want to float on the surface. Use your fork to push the top down, then release, allowing chocolate to cover the entirety of the ice cream. This will create a beautiful chocolate shell. Use your fork to lift the chocolate covered ice cream (from the bottom) out of the chocolate bath and onto the parchment lined cold pan.
Repeat step 10 until all your ice cream blocks are coated in chocolate. If at any point the ice cream gets too soft, return it to the freezer. Likewise, if the chocolate becomes too hard, it can be heated to melt again. It may get more difficult to dunk the ice cream as the chocolate is used up and the level recedes, so have a spoon ready to assist in drizzling over the uncovered areas.
Once they are all coated, place the whole tray in the freezer for thirty or more minutes. After that, the ice cream will be cold, and the chocolate shell will have set. Time to bring them out, and enjoy!
Wow. Would you believe you could make something this good at home? The nostalgia factor is huge, and brings me back to happier days of my youth in every crunchy, ice cream filled bite. As an improvement, these did not fall apart as easily as the store bought ones. Even better than that, I didn’t have to suffer through pants off embarrassment to eat them! The worst part of this is just waiting for ice cream to freeze. These days, that’s as much as I’m willing to suffer through for a chocolate-coated ice cream novelty.
We’ll see how long that lasts.
