Frozen Fool

Remember that fool that I made last week? (Not the one I made of myself, the Strawberry-Rhubarb Fool.) By the end of the post, I had begun musing on the possibilities of making it into a frozen treat. It turned out to be as easy as putting it in the freezer.

I made the fool similarly too the way I described it in Fooling Around, using all that I had left of the Strawberry Rhubarb sauce. I also added a little more sugar to the whipped cream, mostly because I didn’t refer to the posted recipe and was going from (apparently bad) memory. The little extra sugar probably didn’t hurt, since the flavors of a very cold mouthful tend to be deadened a bit.

The result was sort of a semifreddo, which means “half cold” in Italian and refers to desserts that are half frozen. Since the cream is whipped in my frozen fool, it doesn’t freeze rock-hard, but the texture is a little fluffier than ice cream. This is easy to do and requires no special equipment, or even any extra steps after the fruit and cream mixture is placed in the freezer. I’m sure this could be made with other flavors as well. Think peaches and raspberries or blueberries and ginger.

The recipe below calls for the entire batch of Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce as made in the Fooling Around post, and the appropriate amount of whipped cream. I didn’t mention this before, but if you are going to make this with Keith around, make sure to prepare extra whipped cream. He will steal some.

Strawberry Rhubarb Frozen Fool (a semifreddo-style dessert)

1 recipe Strawberry Rhubarb sauce (about 1 ½ cups), well chilled
2 cups heavy whipping cream
¼ cup sugar
2 tablespoons orange liqueur (optional)

1. Whip the cream until it begins to thicken, and lifting the beater or whisk leaves soft, floppy peaks. Add the sugar and optional orange liqueur. Continue whipping the cream until lifting the beater from the bowl leaves firm peaks that stand up.

2. Pour the Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce onto the whipped cream. Fold the sauce into the cream like this: take a rubber spatula and use it to cut through the fruit into the cream. Turn the spatula to sort of scoop up some of the cream and bring it up from the bottom and over the top. Turn the bowl a little and do it again until there are only a few faint streaks of fruit running through the well-mixed fool. The idea is to incorporate the fruit sauce without deflating the cream.

3. Line a 8” or 9” bread pan with plastic wrap using large enough pieces of wrap to extend over the sides of the pan. Pour the whipped cream mixture into the pan and spread it out evenly. Draw the plastic wrap extensions up over the top of the mixture (or cover with another piece of plastic wrap if not long enough). Place in the freezer for several hours.

Makes 8-10 (polite) servings. You can eat the whole thing in one sitting if you want to, but I’m not responsible for the consequences.