Gluten Free Ice Cream Toppings

I'm a massive ice cream addict. But ice cream can be tricky, fooling you into thinking no gluten could possibly be present, and then surprising you with an innocent sounding toffee ice cream that's packed full of nasties.

At home I keep us stocked with Kelly's Cornish Clotted Cream Ice Cream. Their recipes are gluten free, though they cannot guarantee no gluten in the supply chain, but it causes me no issues.

So, with just vanilla flavour in the freezer, toppings are necessary to jazz pudding up a bit. Here are a few of my favorite gluten free ice cream toppings: -

• A teeny cup of hot espresso (with some booze too if you like, try amaretto)
• Some crushed salted peanuts
• A home made chocolate sauce made from melted dark (or milk) chocolate (25gms), butter (10 gms), golden syrup (1tbsp)and a pinch of salt
• Grated chocolate
• Dulce de leche (caramel sauce - Nestle do it in a tin, Merchant Gourmet in a jar)
• Stem ginger from a jar, chopped with some of the syrup
• Bashed up cinder toffee (honeycomb)
• Golden or maple syrup (sets like toffee on the cold ice cream!)
• Raspberry puree and chopped peaches (peach melba)
• Homemade blackcurrant jam (make sure it's not too sugary)
• Homemade praline, roast a few nuts in a dry frying pan, bash up, melt sugar in a pan till caramel forms (carefully, megga hot!), tip in the nuts, pour out onto baking paper, then bash up when set. I sometimes add salt to the caramel too (salted caramel is dead trendy at the mo)
• The same nut praline but made with salted peanuts, incredible
• Good quality lemon curd (mmmmmm!)
• Rum soaked sultanas (I don't like raisins!)
• Tinned morello cherries in syrup
• Crumbled gluten free cookies, shortbread or biscuits
• Cinnamon stewed apple
• Crumbled meringue

Of course you can combo a couple of these items and make a yummy ice cream sundae. It's fun to think of a cake or dessert you like and make an ice cream sundae in its honour, or just match classic flavour combos, just like the 'jelly belly' jelly bean menu.

• Dark chocolate + morello cherries = black forest gateaux
• Cinnamon apple + crumbled shortbread = apple crumble
• Coffee + amaretto + grated chocolate = tiramisu
• Lemon curd + meringue = lemon meringue pie
• Coffee + bashed walnuts = coffee cake
• Marshmallows + chocolate sauce + bashed biscuits = rocky road
• Rum soaked raisins + cinnamon apple = apple strudel
• Cinder toffee + chocolate sauce = crunchie bar
• Crushed peanuts + caramel + chocolate sauce = snickers bar
• Caramel + pecans + crushed shortbread = pecan pie

I can't think of any more right now, if you have any ice cream sundae ideas that re-create classic puddings please let me know and I will add to the list!

I have seen for sale some marshmallow sort of spread from the USA, called fluff I think, which would be nice swirled in ice cream, possibly to make other meringue type sundaes, like a key lime pie.

I also have a thing for sorbets that are flavoured like my fave cocktails, you can make a mojito sorbet, magarita flavour, even champagne sorbet. But too much booze stops it freezing, so just a hint of booze is all that is needed, its not a frozen cocktail after all. More on this later perhaps.

On a totally different subject, I have some good news for 2010. Just before Xmas I had a little baby boy, hes super cute and a very good boy, so I'm not suffering from too much sleep deprivation. Hoping my time off work will mean I can blog much more this year!

Happy new year readers, hope you all had a lovely gluten free Xmas, lets all have a lovely gluten free 2010.