Easy Christmas Ice Cream Wreath with Mixed Berries and Chocolate
With Christmas in Australia being a rather warm affair, ice cream is the perfect addition to a Christmas dessert table.
Recently, I saw a pavlova wreath over on Pinterest and I thought this lovely idea would be easily transferable to an ice cream wreath.
To say I am delighted with the results, would be an understatement. I think she came up beautifully.
This was so easy, it's almost criminal. The beauty is, you make it the day before or even the week before. All you need to do on the big day is, dress it with fruit and some greenery and dust with icing sugar, just before serving.
So here 's what I did. The recipe is below, but here are a few tips I learned along the way. I used a 22cm spring form tin with the largest Vegemite jar wrapped in baking paper, to make the hole in the centre of the wreath. Make sure you line the base of the tin with baking paper. Next time, I would probably remove the Vegemite label and not bother wrapping the jar in baking paper, as it would make a more perfect centre for the wreath. Oh well, next time.
It needs to be a jar, so you can pour some warm water into it, when it comes out of the freezer. This allows the jar to be easily removed, from the centre of the wreath. Make sure the water you pour in is not too hot, as it will crack the jar.
I used grated chocolate and some stewed strawberries in the ice cream, but you could use choc chips, nuts, dried fruit, crushed honey comb, crushed meringue, or whatever you like.
I just used a good quality low fat ice cream, which I softened, so I could mix the strawberries and chocolate through easily.
I also swirled the strawberries through with a chopstick to create a pretty pattern.
Easy Christmas Ice Cream Wreath with Mixed Berries and Chocolate
Serves 10-12
500g or 2 punnets of strawberries
1/3 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup water
2 litres of good quality vanilla ice cream
100 g or 1/2 block of cooking chocolate grated or roughly chopped
1 packet of frozen berries or fresh berries to dress
Icing sugar to dust
Mint to garnish
Good quality Chocolate sauce to serve
Prepare your spring form pan as described above.
Allow ice cream to soften for about 20 minutes
Meanwhile hull the strawberries and place in a small pot over a medium heat on the stove, with the sugar and water. Just before they boil, turn the heat down to low and allow to simmer for 20 minutes uncovered. Allow to cool for 5 minutes.
Once the ice cream has softened sufficiently, stir through the grated chocolate. Mix well. Then dollop the strawberry mixture in with a spoon and swirl with a chop stick through the ice cream.
Pour or spoon the mixture into your prepared spring form tin.
Ensure the top is smoothed over.
Freeze over night.
To decant the wreath from the tin, put some warm water into the sink and immerse the tin into the water, so the water comes up the sides, being careful not to let the water come up too high and touch the ice cream. Carefully pour some warm water into the jar in the centre. Remove the tin from the sink after about 1 minute and open the spring. The tin's ring should easily be removed Remove the centre jar.
Return the wreath to the freezer to refreeze the edges for about 45 minutes. You can do all this the day before your event.
Just before serving, dress with fresh or frozen fruit, dust with icing sugar and garnish with mint.
Drizzle each serve with chocolate sauce if desired.
Serve immediately
Note: One thing I noticed when I sliced the wreath, was the strawberries and chocolate had sunk to the bottom and formed 2 distinct layers, which was quite pretty. You can kind of see it in the shots below. My ice cream was quite soft, so I think that's why they layered up like that.
I went a little crazy with the chocolate sauce.