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Flowering Ice Cream
Procure new flower-pots, about two and a half inches in diameter; wash thoroughly; fill with ice cream; cover with grated chocolate to represent soil, and stick a flower in each.
This is a presentation trick rather than a formula: the ice cream is whatever you already have, and the work is all in the pot. A few points make the difference between a convincing planter and a soggy mess.
- Pot sizeTwo and a half inches across the top is a very small pot — roughly a single scoop, served as one portion. Modern 2.5-inch terracotta pots are sold as seedling pots and hold about half a cup.
- Line the potUnglazed terracotta is porous and will draw moisture out of the cream while shedding clay dust into it. Wash and dry the pots, then line each with a disc and collar of parchment or a fitted paper cup before filling.
- The drainage holeMost flowerpots have one, and melting cream will find it. Plug it from the inside with a scrap of parchment or a square of foil, or set the pots on a small tray.
- Freeze the pots firstTerracotta at room temperature will melt the surface of the ice cream on contact. Chill the empty lined pots in the freezer for an hour, pack them, then return them to the freezer until firm.
- Chocolate "soil"Grated chocolate reads well but softens quickly under the hand. Chocolate cookie crumbs or a mix of the two hold their crumbly look longer; scatter the topping just before serving.
- Choose the flower carefullyThe book assumes a decorative bloom, not something to eat, but anything touching a dessert should be non-toxic. Violets, pansies, nasturtiums and small roses are safe; avoid lily of the valley, oleander, foxglove, hydrangea and anything from a florist that may have been sprayed.
- Anchor the stemPush a plastic straw or a short length of a paper drinking straw down through the cream first, then slip the stem into it. The flower stands straight and the cut stem never sits in the cream.
- ServingOne pot per person, brought out just before eating; they hold their shape perhaps five minutes at the table. Provide a teaspoon rather than a fork — the cream has to be dug out of the pot.
Trompe-l'oeil ice creams were a fixture of American and British entertaining from the mid-nineteenth century onward, when pewter and tin moulds let cooks turn frozen cream into asparagus bundles, hams, lambs and baskets of fruit. Flowerpot ice cream belongs to a slightly later, homelier branch of the same impulse: instead of an expensive mould, the hostess bought a few cents' worth of nursery pots and did the illusion with grated chocolate and a cut flower. The conceit has never quite died; restaurant "flowerpot" desserts with crumb soil and a herb sprig are the same joke, a century on.