Tuesdays with Dorie: Mint Chocolate Oreo Ice Cream Torte and a Bonus

Come on inside for summer's last big chill. It's time for Tuesdays with Dorie and I've got an Arctic double whammy for you..... This week's assignment was an elegant triplebanded ice cream torte. The timing is perfect, since with a few little tweaks, this would make a stellar dessert for Labor Day. (Keep on coming back-I've got three great burgers for Labor's Day that I'll share this week.) Join along and squeeze in one last summery dessert before we all start paring Granny Smiths and humming the theme song from Johnny Appleseed. I made two separate ice cream tortes, because I wasn't thrilled with the presentation of torte number one, a chocolate mint oreo version. Oh, it was tasty but a little too, well, fussy for me. Maybe I'm just a simple country bumpkin busy mom, but I need a lot of reward for my efforts. All that freezing and waiting and freezing and waiting and blowdrying(really!) and refreezing and waiting. And maybe I made some mistakes. I should have crushed the mint oreos and thrown them in my mint ice cream instead of getting fancy shmancy with the layering, and I should have lined my pan with tin foil and removed the whole thing instead of blowdrying a glass loaf pan. I'm not sure if Paul Bunyan could slice through those frozen oreos. My dangerous slicing was more like a knife-smooshing, but none of our guests complained. (We had a group of kids over to play and when the grown ups came to pick them up I forced them all to come in for dessert. Generosity is my only defense against excessive sweets.) I wanted to try it again, but in a more accessible way.
I made an easier version for a Sunday evening family get-together, and this faster and homier technique would work well with any flavors. I mixed vanilla ice cream (homemade-but store-bought would work well) with peanut butter and chopped Reese's peanut butter cups, plunked into a pie dish, and stuck it in the freezer for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I made a half batch of milk chocolate ganache and poured it over the top. When it was firm, I decorated the top with some aerosol whipping cream (lazy me) and more chopped peanut butter cups. That's it! Simple and beautiful and.....gone. Every last drop. Click here for the real recipe in its entirety. For a pie dish version, you'll only need about half of a ganache batch plus a little less than a half gallon of ice cream. Money Saving Tips:
Each attempt cost about $6.00, pretty reasonable for a great frozen dessert. Plain chocolate chips work well in this ganache. You can pep up a medium quality vanilla ice cream with any number of candies of flavorings, so be creative with what you've got on hand. Wouldn't it be delicious with raspberry ice cream and white chocolate ganache, mocha ice cream with toasted walnuts and dark chocolate, pistachio ice cream with dark chocolate....the possibilities are endless.
Coming Tomorrow:
Labor Day Menu
Classic Cheeseburgers with Homemade Hamburger Buns