Crispy fried ice cream

Fried ice cream.. I was surprised when I heard one of my colleague talking about it a few months back. Yes, till then I had never even heard of it. From then, I was longing to taste it and finally, I tasted fried ice cream for the first time at Krishnavilasam restaurant and fell in love with this dessert!! I am not a big fan of ice creams and I don't even have the small cup of ice cream served at weddings but this dessert was unique, as the top crunch was warm and when cut open, there was chill ice cream inside. Then I tasted it for the second time in Momos restaurant when I had gone there for a team lunch. From then I wanted to try it out but didn't take any steps for it, until last week, when my team mates challenged me to do it at home. I liked the challenge and tried it with the home made mango ice cream that I did two days back. It came out so well. The process is simple, just that we need to be cautious, act quick and have lots of patience. I have provided detailed step by step recipe so that it will be easy for all to try it out at home! Most of the recipes that I browsed, used egg yolk to coat the ice cream but I have tried the eggless version which is inspired from a video by ready-steady-eat channel on YouTube.

INGREDIENTS:

• Plain ice cream of any flavor of your choice - 8 scoops (I used mango ice cream)
• Chocolate sponge cake - 2 cups, crushed
• Maida - 1/2 cup
• Water - as required
• Cornflakes - 2 cups, crumbled 
• Oil - for deep frying
• Chocolate sauce or honey - for topping (Optional)

METHOD:

1. Take small scoops of any plain ice cream of your choice and arrange them on a tray. Freeze it for 1 hour till it gets hard 
   
2. Crush the sponge cake with hands so that it resembles bread crumbs. I have used chocolate sponge cake, you could use even plain vanilla sponge cake or any of the ready made plain tea time cakes available in the market 
   
3. Take the freezed ice cream scoops and quickly roll them in the crushed cake mixture such that the entire ice cream is coated with the cake layer as shown and immediately put it back in the freezer for 2 hours 
   
4. In the meanwhile, have the crumbled cornflakes and the maida+water paste ready. For the paste, mix maida with water, so that it forms a batter of thick pouring consistency (similar to bajji batter). It should neither be too thick nor too runny 
   
5. Take the cake coated ice cream scoops and dip them in the maida paste and immediately roll it over the crumbled cornflakes so that the entire ball is coated with cornflakes. Again put it back in the freezer for about 2-4 hours 
   
6. Heat oil in a pan. Drop a piece of cornflakes in the oil to check if it is hot, if bubbles appear, then the oil is hot enough. Now lower the flame and gently drop in the freezed and coated ice cream balls into the oil and fry them for just 15 seconds. Keep moving the ball when frying. If you fry it for too long, then the ice cream will start coming out. So be cautious. Place the fried balls on tissue paper to drain excess oil and serve immediately
7. To add in more richness to the dessert, you can top it up with some chocolate sauce or honey and a few nuts as shown below. Doesn't it look so tempting!! 
   

And this is how it will get over in a jiffy!!!

Notes:

• The sponge cake can also be replaced with any powdered biscuit
• You can do the preparations till step 5 and store it in zip pouches or air tight containers for even 2-3 weeks in the freezer and just before serving, you can fry them and serve immediately! 
• While frying the balls, for first timers like me, it is better to fry them one at a time. If you are very confident with your deep frying skills, then you can fry two at a time and it is better to keep the remaining balls in the freezer and take them out just before frying them. Trying this recipe for the first time, that too in summer, was quite a challenging task for me and the one main lesson that I learnt was not to take out all the balls out together. Work quick and with just two at a time