Nifty Ways To Use Melted Ice Cream

Left your ice cream on the counter for too long? Feels like game over, doesn’t it? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve refrozen slightly melted ice cream plenty of times (so long as it hasn’t sat out long enough to become potentially unsafe), but it’s never quite the same – and if you’ve ever tried to freeze a full puddle of ice cream, you’ll know how bad things get. When ice cream melts, it loses its aeration and its smoothness, and refreezing it will leave you with a flat, grainy block of unpleasant dairy. Not exactly the dessert you want.

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But there’s salvation at hand. You don’t have to throw away that melted ice cream – you just have to repurpose it. Here are a few ways to do just that. A note, too: all of these ideas work best with vanilla ice cream, and I’ll explain why in each one.

Bathe Your French Toast

Bathing French toast in melted ice cream cuts out a fair bit of work. Instead of making a custard to dip your bread into, you’re using an ingredient that has all of the components said custard would have: Egg, cream, and flavorings.

As alluded to above, this will work less well with ice cream with inclusions, or out-there flavors. Vanilla ice cream is by far the best option here, as its flavor profile of creaminess and vanilla emulates exactly what you’re going for. Just dip your bread in, and get it on the heat.

Add It To A Cocktail

Melted ice cream can be used in most cocktails that call for heavy cream, unless you’re trying to achieve a particularly dry flavor profile (which, combined with cream, would be slightly left-of-center). Like heavy cream, it’ll add body to your drinks, but it’ll also hit them with a sweetness and a fuller flavor. Just make sure you account for the ice cream’s sugar content by reducing the syrup quantity in your drink.

Again, importantly, if you’re doing this, only do it with ice creams that have minimal flavors or ingredients (and really, you should stick to vanilla). Good cocktails rely on a balance of a few things, not a clash of many – and if you’re pouring melted Neapolitan ice cream into your drink, you’re gonna struggle.

Substitute Crème Anglaise With It

This one’s an Ina Garten trick. As she states in an Instagram video in collaboration with Goldbelly, crème Anglaise is, essentially, melted vanilla ice cream (and vice versa): It’s just eggs, sugar, vanilla, and cream. It can also be cumbersome to make, and if, like Ina, you just need a quick base for a chocolate cake, a good-quality vanilla ice cream will do the trick just fine.

It really does need to be good-quality, though. The reason why good crème Anglaises shine is because of their simplicity and use of the best ingredients. Going for something inexpensive won’t do you any favors, and it’ll also likely mean that your ice cream is thinner than you’d like when melted.