Taiwanese Ice Cream Burrito
I don’t even remember where I first heard about it now, but for the last year I’ve been obsessing over an ice cream idea that seemed both bizarre and perfect at the same time. This common Taiwanese street food combines peanut brittle, ice cream and coriander rolled up in a crepe, which is a good portion of things I love tucked into one.
At first coriander and sweets seems like a strange pairing, but the same flavor is essentially the basis of pad thai or salsa with the sweetness ramped up. Fragrant floral notes are common in many desserts, so I could see how it would work. I’m mostly surprised that coconut isn’t one of the standard ice creams used in this preparation… or maybe it is and no one is reporting it.
The three common ice cream flavors cited are pineapple, taro root and peanut. These would all be wrapped up in a crepe or a papiah skin, a type of spring roll wrapper common to the area usually used for savory preparations. I watched a video on how to make these and quickly decided that crepes would suffice as, for all things involved in this, a several hour preparation dough that required learning a specific cooking technique seemed unnecessary when something similar could be substituted.
There is very little documentation about this on the English interweb and what I could find seemed to be repeated information from only two sources, but the giant blocks of peanut brittle are a frequently photographed part of the process, usually accompanied with an archaic looking tool to shave it with. All of the pictures depict it as darker than what we normally eat here. So instead of little pieces of crackling caramel studded with nuts, I used my usual recipe for Peanut Brittle, but cooked the sugar closer to 308 degrees and poured it into a Christmas cookie tin to form a big block. What purpose a giant block of peanut brittle will serve me after all the ice cream is used up is beyond me, but shaving a giant block seems more authentic! It was only after making this that I learned they use malt sugar, which gives the characteristic dark color, but my dark caramel would have to do now.
Since it was already a test of my patience to wait for the ice cream maker to freeze in between making a sorbet and an ice cream, I wanted to purchase the taro root ice cream already prepared. The closest thing I could find was red bean ice cream on short notice, so I decided just to stick with my two homemade flavors instead. It would be enough.
I had read that these burritos take a surprisingly long time to melt on the streets of Taiwan, but during a heatwave in a Montreal kitchen they were already dripping by the time we got to the end. This is am ambitious recipe to concoct start to finish from scratch, but I definitely recommend trying it if you find yourself in Taiwan or buy a few pints and a package of brittle. I can safely say that grated peanut brittle is easily one of the best ice cream toppings imaginable. Strangely, though perhaps just due to our humid conditions at the moment, it almost completely loses its crunch and becomes pillowy and chewy like a nut-flavored caramel. Delicious. The coriander is an especially great pairing with the pineapple sorbet, though I’m not entirely sure peanut and pineapple are a match made in heaven, there’s little overlap. Instead, it’s like having two desserts in one. What could be better?
Basic Crepes
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 egg, beaten
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted
- 3/4 cup to 1+ cup milk
- Whisk together the flour, sugar, egg and butter until combined, then whisk in half of the milk in a steady stream. Set aside for up to half an hour to allow the starch to absorb the liquid, then add more milk, if necessary, to make a thin batter.
- Heat a crepe pan or nonstick skillet over medium heat until hot. The butter in the batter should prevent the crepes from sticking, but lightly brush your pan with oil, if necessary. Pour a small ladle full of batter into the center of the pan. Quickly rotate the pan in a circle to completely and evenly cover the surface with batter.
- Allow the crepe to set, then gently flip with a spatula and cook the other side. Adjust the heat and quantity of batter as necessary and repeat, stacking the prepared crepes on a plate, until all the batter has been used.
Assembly
- 1 crepe
- 2-3 tablespoons peanut brittle, shaved
- 1 scoop peanut butter ice cream
- 1 scoop pineapple sorbet
- 1/4 cup coriander, coarsely chopped
- Lay the crepe on a flat surface and cover with shaved peanut brittle. Place a scoop of peanut butter ice cream and pineapple sorbet in the center of the crepe, top with coriander, then fold the sides in and roll up like a burrito. Eat immediately.