December 2010 - White Christmas Ice Cream Cones

When I started out this blog at the beginning of the year I certainly didn't realise that I would find myself finishing up the year long trip through the issues of delicious. magazine with the 100th issue but it sure is a wonderful way to end up. The scanner did some delightful things to the holographic "delicious."  on the front cover of this issue too. Like I said in my last post I have thoroughly this journey through my back issues (and current issues) of delicious. I plan to keep using them regularly and posting new recipes from them, although not as strictly as I have this year. 

I can hardly believe that I have a stack of 100 issues of delicious. magazines now. I am glad that I do though. There are so many recipes, 1000's I am sure, to go through and to try out. I have only really scratched the surface here this year. I have had a few failures and a couple of things not to my taste but I think that is to be expected when you are trying new recipes. I have to be honest and say that Valli Little has become my foodie hero over this past year. Her recipes are almost always amazing and there are so many of them. I have to wonder how she comes up with all of them. I would think that a large proportion of the recipes I did this year were from her and I am sure that there will be many, many more to come in the future. 

While I earmarked a number of recipes in this issue there were only 2 that I really, really wanted to make. The first I will write about next month, since this is a double issue after all. The second was the magnificent cover recipe, Valli's White Christmas Ice Cream Cones. They just looked fantastic. The styling of the cover was just so beautiful as well. I figured that since it was the 100th issue I just had to do a cover recipe and it was a bonus that it was one of Valli's recipes too. I wish that I could have styled mine like the ones on the cover but, alas, I did not need 6 of these nor did I want to take out the three that I did make at once so my picture looks rather plain. I will also admit that I didn't really follow Valli's recipe either. Instead of using glace fruit chopped and soaked in sherry I used the last of my homemade fruit mince. For the chocolate, all that I had in the house was dark chocolate chips so I roughly chopped some of those up. I don't own wine flutes but I do have some ice cream soda glasses so I put my filled paper cones into them to refreeze. I really enjoyed this dessert a lot and it looked really good. I am sure that it would be just as good using Valli's original recipe but I wanted to use up some stuff that I had on hand so mine are more fruit mince Christmas cones than white Christmas cones but still very, very nice. 

White Christmas Ice Cream Cones

Makes 8 (I halved the recipe and got 3 with a little bit left over)

Ingredients 

• 125 gr mixed glace fruits
• 1/3 cup sherry
• 125 gr dark chocolate
• 1.25 litres vanilla ice cream, softened
• 2/3 cup slivered almonds, toasted and chopped

Method:

• Finely chop fruits and place in bowl with sherry and let soak overnight.
• To prepare paper moulds, cut eight 30cmx20cm sheets of baking paper. Trim 8 sheets of plain A-4 paper into the same size. Lay baking paper sheet over a sheet of regular paper and bring top right corners into the middle of the paper and then roll to form a cone shape. secure with sticky tape. Repeat with the remaining sheets of paper and place in 8 champagne flutes or slim wine glasses.
• Finely chop or grate chocolate.
• Drain the fruits and discard the liquid. 
• Fold into softened ice cream with the almonds and chocolate.
• Scoop the mixture into the cones, packing down ice cream tightly to get it into the point. 
• Put in freezer overnight to refreeze.
• To serve, remove tape and unwrap the paper. Invert cones onto serving plates.