Deliciously Naughty Ice Cream Cake

So my grandma makes a mean ice cream cake, and in true grandma fashion, it is about as unhealthy as can be.  Full of ice cream, cream, meringue, chocolate and raspberry sauce, I'm about to share the recipe for this beauty with you. 

Oh yes!

This recipe is incredibly simple, and all you'll need is:

A decent sized tub of vanilla ice cream

4 cups of whipped cream, and whip it well

100g of chocolate sprinkles or shavings

Approximately 200g of meringue

50g sugar

50g almond meal

2 - 3 tablespoons of cherry or raspberry liqueur

Aprroxmiately 300ml raspberry sauce 

A decent amount of ice cream magic/magic shell chocolate sauce

At this stage I have to point out that quantities do not need to be exact.  My grandma, being a grandma, doubles the amount of chocolate and sugar in this easily.  It is completely up to you how you want to tweak it, this is just the basic recipe which we use. Now the next bit is the really challenging part - mix all your ingredients (except for the rasberry sauce) together and pop it in a springform cake tin (grease that up a bit beforehand to make your life easier later) and voila!

Crush up the meringue before you mix it all together.  I just mashed them up in their little bags.

 

Found this guy in the kitchen, ready to whip some cream!

This is the mixture of meringue, chocolate, almond meal and sugar, with the ice cream just going in.

This is what the mixture should look like once you've mixed everything together well.

Now for the last part - drizzle the entire cake with raspberry sauce.  It doesn't really matter how you do this, so don't worry about being careful.

Once you've done all this, pop it in the freezer overnight, or at least for quite a few hours.

For the finishing touch, just add some of that chocolate sauce that freezes when it goes on ice cream in any pattern you wish.  And then it's done done done and you're ready to tuck in! 

Best enjoyed outside in the sunshine and with friends and family!  Oh who are we kidding, also enjoyed inside and with anyone you trust not to eat too much of it.

Vegetarian Goodness in Istanbul

Someone told me that it would be difficult to be vegetarian in Turkey.  They lied.  The vegetarian and vegan fare in Istanbul was stellar, I was constantly spoilt for choice with multitudes of vegetarian choices.  And this applied to Turkey in general.  One of my favourites was Galata Kitchen in the Galata area of Istanbul (surprise surprise), which I loved so much that we went back several times just to try every dish they offered.  I raved about the falafels at Kikero Falafel in a previous post, so I won't repeat myself, but basically every local taverna/restaurant/cafe will provide you with heaps of vegetarian and vegan options (see photos below).  Without further ado, here are some favourites.