A few weekends ago I decided to have a go at making a healthy version of an ice cream cornetto. I picked one of the hottest days of the year to give them a go and so my first batch dribbled out of the cones in a big messy puddle and were quite the disaster! With a little perseverance, however, I worked out how to make my filling a thick enough consistency – hurrah! Then I had lots of fun playing around with decorations. In my book you can never have too many sprinkles.
You’ll need a high powered blender to make this one on account of nearly everything being frozen, but it’s much less time consuming than making proper churned ice cream.
This isn’t really a recipe post as such, it’s more ‘how to have fun whilst making a mess, eating more sprinkles than you probably should, but not feeling guilty because it has fruit in it and that totally counts towards our five a day’ kind of a deal.
* Wafer cones
* A punnet of strawberries (I used big fat juicy Driscoll Jubilee Strawberries* from the Tesco Finest range because I wanted them to be the hero of the dish and these have a lovely sweet flavour)
* Half a tub of low fat vanilla yoghurt
* 1/2 tbsp honey
* A small tin of pineapple chunks
* 3 tbsps Pineapple juice
* 45g bar of milk or white chocolate
* Vegetable oil
* Chocolate sauce
* Sprinkles and decorations (I used hundreds and thousands, honeycomb and freeze dried strawberry chunks, all picked up at Lakeland)
Fill an icecube tray with low fat vanilla yoghurt and freeze it overnight (this is a great way to thicken up smoothies if you don’t like banana!)
Hull the strawberries, then chop half of them into smaller chunks and freeze these overnight. Reserve the rest in the fridge.
Very gently melt your bar of chocolate. I was particularly lazy on this occasion and just popped it in a saucepan on the hob using a very low temperature and stirring continuously. You might want to take the safer option of resting the bowl of chocolate ‘bain marie’ instead (bigger bowl of boiled water).
To get the chocolate to a nice glossy, liquid consistency, add a couple of drops of oil to the melted chocolate and stir it through thoroughly. You want it runny enough that you can roll your cornetto in it, but sturdy enough that it stays in place and doesn’t run down your cone! If your chocolate is still too thick continue to add little drops of oil until it’s just right.
Roll the top rim of your cones in the chocolate, then into a separate plate of sprinkles of your choosing.
To keep the cones upright once dipped, stand them in a tumbler or shot glass.
Squeeze a bit of chocolate sauce into the bottom of each cone, before quickly transferring them (still in the glasses) to the bottom drawer of the freezer to harden.
To make the filling, hull and chop 2 of the strawberries that you didn’t freeze into very small pieces, then slice the rest into bigger chunks.
Meanwhile, add the frozen strawberry chunks, 6 to 8 yoghurt cubes, honey and pineapple juice to a high powered blender and blitz until smooth. Since strawberries freeze very hard you might need to give the mix a stir occasionally. Give it a taste and if it’s a bit tart, add a bit more honey and blast it again until thick and smooth. Stir through the bigger strawberry chunks (reserving a few bits for garnish).
Take your cones out of the freezer and some of the small strawberry chunks into the bottom of each cone. Without delay, fill the cone with the nice cream, then top with the remaining strawberry chunks and sprinkle liberally with decorations. I added a squeeze more of the chocolate sauce to mine too for good measure!
Now you can either devour them immediately, or carefully pop them back in the freezer for 20 minutes if you want them a bit harder.
…you definitely have to work quickly with these to avoid a melty runny mess, but they are so fun play about with!
What flavours would you try in your nice cream cones?
*Disclaimer: I was kindly recompensed for my recipe ingredients in exchange for creating this recipe!
