Description
These no-churn strawberry shortcake ice cream bars feature a tangy strawberry core, surrounded by smooth vanilla ice cream and finished with a crunchy shortcake coating. They’re sure to lift your spirits!
Ingredients
For the ice cream layers
- 1 punet (250gms) fresh ripe strawberries
- 1 teaspoon white sugar
- 1 x 14 oz (397 gms) tin sweetened condensed milk
- 2 cups (500mls) thickened cream
- 18ish (25gms) freeze dried strawberries
For the coating
- 2 & ⅓ cups (350gms) white chocolate melts
- ¾ cup (125gms) refined coconut oil
- 14ish (20gms) freeze-dried strawberries
- 1 & ½ cups (50gms) Rice krispy cereal/ rice bubbles
Instructions
To make the ice cream bars
Pre-heat your oven to 320°F (160°C/140°C fan-forced). Hull the fresh strawberries and half or quarter. Mix in bowl with 1 teaspoon of sugar and spread out out a baking tray. Bake for 40 minutes or untill the fruit is starting to roast and dry out
Allow the strawberries to cool then blitz in a food processor. The strawberries will be reasonably dry so you may need to stop the machine and carefully poke them down a few times to blend them.
Roughly divide the tin of sweetened condensed milk into two bowls. Wash and thoroughly dry the food processor. Measure the freeze-dried strawberries for the ice cream and process in food processor until a fine powder forms. Add the roasted blitzed strawberries and freeze-dried strawberry powder to one half of the sweetened condensed milk.
Whip the cream until firm peak form with electric hand beaters or in a stand mixer. Add half the cream to the strawberry mix and carefully fold through. The mix will be quite thick.
Add the vanilla and the rest of the cream to the other half of the sweetened condensed milk and fold in well, taking care not to knock the air out of the cream.
Spoon the vanilla mix into the molds until about half full. Put the strawberry mix into a piping bag with a large nozzle attached. Insert the piping bag into the vanilla mix in the molds. You want the nozzle near the bottom of the molds, then gently pipe in, pulling the nozzle up so it fills the center of the molds with the strawberry mix. Leave a small gap at the top, top up with vanilla mix.
Put the lids on the popsicle molds and insert the sticks. Freeze for at least six hours or until very firm
Have an airtight container ready to put the unmolded bars into and some baking paper to keep them separated. Run the bottom half of the molds very briefly under cool water. Insert a butter knife gently down each side of the ice cream bars, then gently pull them out by the sticks. Return the ice cream bars to the freezer for about an hour to firm up.
To coat the ice cream bars
Add the white chocolate melts to a microwave proof bowl and melt in the microwave in 30 second bursts until melted through. Add the refined coconut oil and mix well. You may need to heat the mix for another burst or two to get the coconut oil fully melted and mixed in.
Blitz freeze dried strawberries for the coating in a clean, dry food processor. Add the rice crispy cereal and blitz briefly.
Prepare you dipping station with the chocolate coconut mix on one plate, strawberry rice crispy mix on another plate and a container to return the bars to the freezer.
Working quickly dip one short side and large flat side of the bar into the chocolate mix. Shake the drips off then immediately put in the strawberry coating and press down. Gently brush off excess coating.
Dip the other sides into the chocolate, shake off the excess and into the coating mix, pressing the coating on any exposed edges. Gently shake off any excess coating and put into the storage container.
Repeat with the remaining ice cream bars. Return to the freezer for one hour to firm up and you’re done
Notes
For an extra crispy crunchy (but less traditional) coating, use rice crispy cereal.
For more traditional coating you can use shortbread cookies or even dried out toasted vanilla or pound cake.
To make regular scoopable ice cream simply swirl the strawberry and vanilla ice cream together into a loaf tin then freeze until firm. Mix the strawberry coating without the melted chocolate. Allow to set, chop and sprinkle on top of the ice cream and you’re done!
Storage:
In the unlikely event you have any left these ice cream bars will store well in an airtight container for up to three days for maximum crispy crunchy coating. If storing stacked together put a piece of parchment paper between them to stop them from sticking together. They will still be good to eat for up to two months after this, but the coating will start to go soft and be less crunchy.
- Prep Time: 30 mins
- Cook Time: 40 mins
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 12 to 10 ice cream bars (approx. 100mls/ 3.4 oz ea.)
- Calories: 425 kcal
- Sugar: 14g
- Sodium: 128mg
- Fat: 34g
- Saturated Fat: 24g
- Trans Fat: 0.001g
- Carbohydrates: 30g
- Fiber: 0.4g
- Protein: 3g
- Cholesterol: 48mg