Dessert day! More specifically, easy dessert day. Even more specifically, easy ice cream dessert day. Exactly, easy vanilla ice cream covered in a crunchy, toasty cinnamon coating dessert day!
One day I sat in my living room thinking about cereal, wondering if I could concoct a recipe that focused on cereal. I thought of hot cereal and cold cereal; I thought of quick breakfasts and overnight bakes. But I kept circling back to Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I do not know why. My mother certainly didn’t buy fancy cereal growing up and it is not my favorite cereal by a long shot. But it was central to my thoughts that day. I know Cinnamon Toast Crunch is off limits for most folks (180 mg sodium per serving, plus the sodium in the milk), so I shifted my thoughts to cereals that aren’t off limits. The most obvious choice is shredded wheat, which has no sodium (yay!), but also not a ton of flavor (boo!). So the natural progression was to combine the two ideas – why not cinnamon toast shredded wheat?
The process for making this dessert is really easy, but if you’d prefer you can use the crunchy cinnamon coating as a topping for a sundae. This is a good easy option if you don’t want the fuss over rolling the ice cream into balls.
Cinnamon Toast Unfried Ice Cream
SODIUM COUNT: 40 per serving; 163 mg in the entire recipe.
- Prep Time: 12 minutes
- Cook Time: 8 minutes
- Total Time: 20 minutes
- Yield: 4 1x
Ingredients
- 2 cups vanilla ice cream ((4 servings))
- 1/2 cup crushed shredded wheat cereal
- 1 1/2 tsp unsalted butter
- 1 1/2 tsp honey
- 1 1/2 Tbsp brown sugar
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 4 Tbsp Hershey chocolate syrup ((optional))
Instructions
- Make four ½-cup balls of ice cream. Do this by scooping ice cream onto a square of plastic wrap. Fold the plastic wrap around the ice cream and pat it into a ball. Reuse the plastic wrap for the remaining balls of ice cream. Place the balls on a plate, cover, and pop the plate back into the freezer while you prep the coating.
- Melt butter in a small microwave-safe bowl; stir in the honey, cinnamon, and sugar. Drizzle over the crushed shredded wheat and stir to combine.
- Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add the crushed cereal mixture to the pan and cook for about 6-8 minutes, until the cereal gets lightly toasted and the sugar has caramelized.
- When the cereal is finished cooking, sprinkle the cereal on a flat surface such as a cookie sheet or a dinner plate coated with parchment paper. Set aside to cool. At this stage, you can store this coating in an airtight container. It should keep at room temperature for about two weeks ago.
- When the cereal is cool, remove the ice cream from the freezer. Roll each ball of ice cream in the cereal until completely coated. Top each with 1 tablespoon chocolate syrup and enjoy!
Notes
NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION Yield: 4 servings
Sodium: 40.3 mg, Calories: 276.3, Total Fat: 8.8 g, Saturated Fat: 5.4 g, Cholesterol: 23.8 mg, Carbohydrates: 46.1 g, Fiber: 3.0 g, Sugar: 32.7 g, Protein: 4.7 g.
What brand of ice cream do you use?
To calculate the nutrition I used Breyer’s Natural Vanilla, which has just under 40 mg sodium per 1/2 cup serving. But I’ve also used different brands with similar sodium and it works great.