Hot Ice Cream Balls

Chrissyo's Note:

There is a great Chinese restaurant in my home town. Chinese is the predominant language spoken by its customers. This really adds to the atmosphere of believing that we are eating authentic Asian food. One of the specialities of the house is Hot Ice-cream Balls. I have a sneaky feeling that this is not a traditional recipe as I understand that Chinese cuisine does not offer a wide range of Chinese desserts. Anyway, I always without fail leave room in my tummy for Hot Ice-cream Balls. After patronising this restaurant for a considerable time, I plucked up enough courage one night toward the end of the evening, when only a few customers were left, to ask the waiter if I could have the recipe. No, to be honest, I begged for the recipe. :) After much to-do which involved remaining customers and a lot broken English, I managed to get this recipe. 90% of the recipe can be made way ahead of time but it only takes 3 seconds to cook the balls. It seems like a lot of mucking around but it really is worth the effort for the treat that is certain to please.

• Total Time: 48 hrs 30 mins
• Prep Time: 48 hrs
• Cook Time: 30 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 10

ICE CREAM BALLS

• 2 liters vanilla ice cream (good quality full cream)
• plain flour
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• breadcrumbs
• vegetable oil (for deep frying)

CARAMEL SAUCE

• 60 g butter
• 1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
• 1/2 cup water
• 3 tablespoons Grand Marnier or 3 tablespoons Cointreau liqueur
• 1 tablespoon cornflour
• 1/2 cup cream

Directions:

1. For success with this recipe, it is important when making these ice-cream balls to have everything as COLD as possible.
2. Ice-cream MUST BE VERY HARD and should be a good quality full cream ice-cream.
3. Put a scone (biscuit) tray into freezer before starting to make the ice-cream balls, so it too is very cold.
4. ICE-CREAM BALLS: Remove ice-cream container from the freezer, scoop ice-cream into balls with an ice-cream scoop*, put onto prepared tray, return to freezer until hard.
5. Then, working very quickly, coat one or two ice-cream balls lightly in flour, dip in combined beaten eggs and milk, then coat firmly with breadcrumbs.
6. Place immediately on tray in freezer; repeat with remaining ice-cream balls.
7. Freeze the crumbed ice-cream balls until very hard, then repeat"egg-and-breadcrumbing" to give them a firm well covered coating.
8. They can now be left for several days until you wish to cook and serve them.
9. Cooking Ice-cream Balls: To fry, place ice-cream balls, two at a time, into deep hot oil, fry for 30 seconds or until golden brown, place on absorbent paper.
10. Serve immediately with Hot Caramel Sauce or Hot Chocolate Sauce or any of your favourite dessert sauces.
11. CARAMEL SAUCE: Put butter and sugar into a pan, stir over heat until butter has melted, add combined remaining ingredients, stir over low heart until sugar dissolves, increase heat, bring to boil.
12. Reduce heat, simmer 3 minutes, stirring constantly.
13. Sauce can be made ahead of time and warm through.
14. *TIP: Dip ice-cream scoop into a glass of water when scooping hard ice-cream into balls.