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.

A 10km Walk Through Berlin

Being a tourist in your own country is strange.  I'm German originally, and still speak the language, but haven't lived there since I was 6.  Suddenly finding myself surrounded by a city where everyone speaks German was a bizarre feeling.  Anyway, I digress.  We arrived to a sun filled Berlin, put on our walking shoes and walked and walked and walked.  Personally, I prefer walking around cities to catching public transport everywhere as it gives you a much better impression of a place (as well as a lovely bit of exercise!), and I ended up doing a lot of walking during my 5 nights in Berlin.  Thank you for playing along weather.

On my suggestion we did quite a few of the big landmarks on our first day, such as the Brandburger Tor, the Reichstag, Alexander Platz, Tiergarten, Museums Insel, you name it and we saw it that day. 

 

I highly recommend these enormous juice boxes you can find in every shop in Berlin.  I've never seen a juice box with a 500ml capacity, and there were just ace.  Tasty and cheap too.  Good way to start the day!

Posing at the Alexander Platz.  Shortly after this I had an incredibly wet bottom from sitting on the side of the fountain.  Oh well, all in the name of a good blog entry.

The Tiergarten is a massive park in the centre of Berlin and you can spend hours walking through it.  We walked up the Strasse des 17 Juni, towards the Grosser Stern, which itself was over a 1.5km walk.  Well worth it though (as long as it isn't raining).  On the way back towards Berlin Mitte, we meandered through the park itself.  It was just a shame we didn't have any food or drinks for a picnic with us as it would have been a perfect setting.  So there's a tip - if it's nice weather bring something with you to consume in the vast Tiergarten!

After a lot of walking we both had quite sore feet, and stopped off at the first cafe we came across.  Luckily for Chewy they had the mother of all brownies there, and I indulged in an ice cream.  Bandy Brooks is the place, and it can be found right next to the Museums Insel.  The last photo is Chewy being very happy with himself after demolishing the brownie, with cream!

 

These last 3 pictures were taken at the Gendarmenmarkt in central Berlin, which is home to the Konzerthaus.  The lady playing the violin in the centre of the Gendarmenmarkt was incredibly talented, and added the loveliest touch to the whole place.  

At the end of the day we counted, and worked out that we'd walked roughly 10km that day.  A well deserved dinner followed! (But more on that in a later post because the restaurant was so great that it deserves it').

Sightseeing & Icecream in Dubrovnik, Croatia

We decided to be quite snap happy once again in Dubrovnik, this beautiful city just lends itself to taking a multitude of touristy photos.  So we walked along the walls, had some a lot of icecream, watched people cliff jumping and then strolled back to our accommodation via some of the most beautiful views I've ever seen.  We were only there for one night as Dubrovnik is pretty expensive, so we just made the most of it that day.  If you want to see what else we got up to that day, have a look at the previous Nishta post!