Sunday, July 11, 2010

Simple as Ice Cream Muffins




Take a second and look around. What do you see?

I see ice cream. Everywhere: in my freezer, in five different places one block away, and in everybody's hands. If I were to listen to myself, I would bathe in ice cream every single morning. Well, maybe not, because I have to hurry in the mornings and doing that would just take too much time.

Nevertheless, seeing everyone walk around with an ice cream cone has made me realize I may be hungry for fresh salads, but I'm also craving ice cream. All the time. See, I like sorbet, but what I really want these days is something creamy and not particularly light. Every time I hear a truck, I turn around, hoping it's the ice cream man or a Mr. Softee truck. Then, I realize I'm in France.

Toto, we're not in America anymore.

Oddly enough, my first reaction to this summertime craving (I say this because in the winter, I crave peppermint ice cream--different category, right?) wasn't to go out and eat ice cream. My first reaction was to go out and buy ice cream, to make ice cream muffins. Same thing? Hardly. Ice cream muffins are not, contrary to what you might be thinking at this very moment, like ice cream sandwiches. They are something else entirely.



When I was still in Urbana, my neighbor Pat found a recipe that she thought I might be interested in. (thanks Pat!) Sure enough, I couldn't wait to try it. Here's the catch: the recipe has two ingredients. Ice cream, and self-rising flour--which actually becomes a tiny five ingredients if, like me, you don't have self-rising flour. Ice cream in muffins? Sure--the ice cream replaces the traditional fat, eggs, and dairy you would find in traditional muffins.

I gave these a try this weekend, after deciding that the new caramelized almond vanilla ice cream I spotted at the supermarket was the perfect ingredient for these. That's the best part--you could really use any kind of ice cream you want, as long as it isn't anything too low-fat. I had fun with my batch and made one third plain, the other third chocolate-chip, and the last third chocolate-peanut butter-chip.

Verdict? These are pretty impressive. The texture is somewhat dense, but not really in a bad way. They aren't too sweet and might even be a little salty for some, so I reduced the original salt content in the recipe. Not to delve into the sketchy issue of calories here, but the recipe states that (without add-ins, obviously) each muffin boasts an impressively low 118 calories and 3 grams of fat. Take that, Starbucks muffins!

Here's the thing. Picture yourself having a get-together and buying lots of ice cream. You'll obviously--well, maybe, not if you're me though--have some ice cream left. Let it melt out in the sun for a half hour, pull out your flour, and 20 minutes later you'll have tomorrow's breakfast.

Magic? Maybe. I knew the ice cream man had something we didn't.

Ice Cream Muffins
adapted from Midwest Living
makes 6 muffins

1 cup ice cream, melted
1 cup self-rising flour
(or: 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1 TS baking powder, 1/4 TS salt, 1/4 TS baking soda)

Optional: 1/3 cup add-ins (chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, nuts, fruit...anything!)

Grease six 2 1/2 inch muffin cups or line with paper baking cups. Preheat oven to 375°F / 180°C.

In a mixing bowl, combine all ingredients and mix until just blended. Fill each cup almost to the top.

Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in muffin cups on a wire rack for 5 minutes.

Note: Midwest Living says to serve them warm, but they were pretty scrumptious at room temperature too.


Note II: I doubled this and it worked out great. The original recipe calls for 1/2 TS of salt, which was a little much to my taste, especially if you double the recipe!
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17 comments:

claudia said...

Amazing! Never heard of such thing: 2 ingredients and you have muffins! I CANNOT wait to try this recipe!

Kerstin said...

Wow, I've never seen anything like this - they look tasty and how cool that you only need 2 ingredients!

Eleni said...

I'm currently at Barnard and was oogling at your blog and guess what...Everyone here LOVES Bilingual Butter and says it's by far the best cooking blog they've seen! :)
Not surprising when you have such a fun recipe.

Paris Pastry said...

What a great Summer recipe! With this heat, muffins are the only thing I'm willing to turn my oven on for, and I've been eating ice cream for days!! Cool that you can add whatever you like. I'd probably add some PB chips. Yum!

Barbara said...

This is a new one on me, Lucie! And I sure hope I can find that caramel almond flavor around here...although I'll have to use all my self-control not to *ahem* eat it all before I make the muffins! :)

Reeni said...

I have never seen such a thing! So unique and intriguing! I can't wait to try them...

grace said...

this is really neat! imagine all the delicious muffin flavors you can achieve, and with such ease. plus, you know, you're eating ice cream for breakfast, which is awesome. (for the record, i don't think bathing in the stuff would be so great--way too sticky, no?) :)

Emily said...

These muffins look amaaazing! I'll have to try using some ice cream in my baking. :)

Juliana said...

Oh! How interesting...I sure will try to make this muffins...love the simplicity of it :-)

Mary Bergfeld said...

I'm amazed that this works, but the proof is right there for me to see. This is a really clever idea and one I have to try just out of curiousity. I hope you have a great day. Blessings...Mary

Jennifer said...

Ummm wow!!! what a fun and sweet recipe! Love the idea!!

Y said...

What a crazy recipe! Almost makes me tempted to try these, even though I'm not sure I could bring myself to use precious ice-cream in this manner (yeah, I'm a peppermint-ice-cream-in-Winter fan too!).

Swee San said...

any type of ice cream ? or only those with eggs ?

Anonymous said...

Thank you - I was thinking they weren't sweet enough as cupcakes, but now that I see they are muffins it makes more sense. I used locally made ice cream from Full Tilt Ice Cream, Seattle (not easy to part with it!) half salted caramel, half Roxbury Road (just a few bits of marshmallow and nuts) and they came out very nice. I can get the 6 tin in the toaster over so didn't even heat up the kitchen (until I made pizza later in the evening.)

SF50 said...

Lucie! This is crazy. I have an ice cream muffin post in the works too. Mine is a little different, but I also found it while going through my Gramma's recipes back home in Illinois. Must be a Midwest thing. They turned out pretty great!

Lucie said...

Swee San: You could try it with frozen yogurt, but I'm pretty sure this recipe would only work out with real, egg-laden ice cream!

Shauna: Those Midwesterners have more crazy recipes than we could imagine ;)

Update on the recipe: Eat these right after you bake them! In my case, they didn't freeze well, and tasted pretty stale once thawed...

pigpigscorner said...

Very interesting recipe! Bookmarked!