Taste of Home’s Halloween Ice Cream Treats

I thought I would give Taste of Home one last chance to inspire me to make a Halloween treat and once again, a bit of a disaster. I thought these Halloween Ice Cream Treats would be a clever, easy and pretty foodie idea for a party but what a pain, once again.

They just use ordinary vanilla ice cream but I had this vision in my head of orange ice cream filled with bloody teeth (frozen pomegranate seeds). I found this super simple orange ice cream recipe that I thought would work perfectly.

I squeezed the juice out of enough clementines to make one cup of orange juice.

I mixed the orange juice with one can of sweetened condensed milk.

I brought one cup of whipping cream to a boil, then removed from heat. I added the zest from a couple of clementines as well as some vanilla bean paste. I let it steep for 30 minutes.

I sieved the whipping cream mixture into the orange juice mixture.

Orange can be a super subtle flavour and colour so I added some extract and orange icing paste. Then I let it cool down to room temperature, covered with plastic wrap and put in the fridge until cold.

I removed pomegranate seeds from a pomegranate (a la Martha Stewart), put them on a parchment-lined baking sheet and froze them.

When the orange mixture chilled I slowly added it to my ice cream maker.

Once it started to thicken up in about 20 minutes I finished by adding the pomegranate seeds. You don’t want it to churn for very long after you add them. You just want them to get evenly distributed without getting crushed.

I put the ice cream into a container and froze solid.

I scooped out the ice cream and put on some flat chocolate cookies. I froze them until firm.

I melted 1 cup of chocolate chips with 1 tsp of shortening and stirred until smooth. Then you were supposed to dip the dessert into the chocolate and coat, like Taste of Home’s photo. Umm… Yeah, right! The chocolate would not stick and the ice cream really started to melt… immediately.

I ended up drizzling it over the top but still, it would not coat the entire ball of ice cream to make it look like a giant truffle. I added some decorative sprinkles…

I went to cut it in half like their photo to reveal the pretty orangey inside with red flecks and it completely disintegrated. Argh!!!!

I love chocolate and orange together but there is no way I would go to the effort to make these loosely chocolate-covered treats. Instead, make the ice cream! Wow, it is fabulous! Super simple, flavourful and perfect for an elegant Halloween party.

I personally loved the popping and crunching of the pomegranate seeds but Reg did not at all. He said they were flavourless when frozen and did not add to the dish but for me, they are supposed to add a touch of creepy and weird to a pretty dessert for Halloween. Despite his opinion, I really recommend adding this spooky touch.

I give Taste of Home’s recipe one out of five wooden spoons and Linda’s orange ice cream recipe five out of five wooden spoons (with my additional touches to the recipe). Feel free to add some Grand Marnier or orange blossom water to the base to play around and make this ice cream your own!

Jamie and Justin agreed with me, so brightly flavourful and delicious. When ice cream is this easy to make, I would make it any time of the year.