Appearance and taste are strongly related. If you taste two dinners comprising of the same ingredients and same cooking method the one that looks better will likely taste better. Your mind is not just being fooled into thinking it will taste better, it actually tastes better. It is because from the moment your brain saw the interesting or delicious-looking food item it started to tickle your taste buds. The top chefs know that a good meal starts long before someone picks up their fork. From the moment you enter a nice restaurant, your senses are being indulged and every little thing has an effect. In short, appearance matters. This is why so many food items are being presented in new and interesting ways (as well as for Instagram likes, of course). One food that has been served as scoops and in cones since time began is ice cream. Recently though the world became excited by the idea of ice cream rolls.
Ice cream rolls look great for two reasons. The rolls themselves look light, delicate, and incredibly soft. The softness appeals to what we know we want our perfect ice cream to be. Soft enough to melt in our mouth but still hard enough to hold its roll form. The second reason is in how they are prepared. Watching the ice cream rolls masterfully being made on the circular dish is a beautiful thing and part of the appeal of getting some ice cream rolls is enjoying the process of them being made.
If there is nowhere near you that serves ice cream rolls or you view your kitchen as a place of experimentation, then I have some good news for you. You can make these wonderful ice cream rolls at home.
To successfully make ice cream rolls at home the main ingredient you will need is dry ice. If you have never used dry ice before, don’t worry, it is not as crazy as it looks. Ok, it is as crazy as it looks but it is pretty easy to use too. Try your local supermarket to see if they stock it, many will have it for Halloween and will know where to get it if they don’t stock it all year round. Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide. This means it is at a lower temperature than normal ice and leaves no residue behind. Very useful for cooking and incredibly useful for making ice cream rolls.
I also had a marble slab at home that I used as well. I started with a standard pan but found it got too hard in the pan while the marble slab was perfect. Start by putting the dry ice in a towel and smashing it up until it breaks into smaller pieces. Be really careful in dealing with dry ice, you need to use gloves and ensure it doesn’t touch your skin. Fill an oven pan with the dry ice and allow it to cool on a marble slab or clean marble countertop.
Let the ice pan sit on the slab for ten minutes and remove it. Your slab should be very cold at this stage. Now place some ice cream on the slab and spread with a pastry thinner. The moment you have it spread you should quickly peel it off. If you leave it too long it will be a rock hard slab instead of a roll. If you pick it up too quickly it won’t stay as a roll, although in my experience it was almost impossible to pick it up too quickly.
You can mix in some other toppings in your ice cream before spreading to make some oreo or chocolate brownie ice cream rolls. Just ensure you break them into tiny pieces to ensure they can be easily spread and peeled. The final step is to serve to some friends and soak up the applause for a job well done.
