Nestle’s #Drumstickdares + a recipe for yummy Rum Raisin Ice Cream

Nestle’s ice cream department seems to be on a roll lately. After coming up with their Temptations Flavours of the World collection, (French Salted Caramel, I love you!) this time they are presenting us with something equally flavour-packed but a bit more handy. Which is to say, they have created ice cream you can carry around because it fits perfectly in your hand.

Interestingly enough, the new flavours are rather fancy stuff, with names like Butter Pecan Praline, and Pistachio Almond Caramel. But they also have more classic offerings like Choco-Vanilla and Coffee-Caramel. You can check out my review on the Drumsticks at the bottom of the post. For now, I wanted to share a recipe for a fancy ice cream of my own. 

The more I learn about dessert-making, the more curious I grow about using liquor. I have always been a bit hesitant to use liquor in anything I make because I feel like I’ll be splurging on something that might end up laying in my pantry for a long time. Nobody in the house drinks, not even when we’re having a bad day, and I can’t even tell the difference between one alcoholic beverage from the other… My point is, I have this gaping hole where knowledge when it comes to the magic of liquor in desserts is supposed to be. Luckily it’s never too late to learn!

I think I’m coming to a point where I feel less scared of ingredients that are unfamiliar to me. I definitely want to keep broadening my repertoire and maintaining this open-mindedness I’m developing, and somehow I feel that buying bottles of quality liquor to use in cookery seems to be a good step towards the direction of this maturity I seek with regards to my attitude in the kitchen.

I know it sounds so serious when I say it like that, but I’ve always been the type of person who strives to go the distance when it comes to things I love. And if my personal mission to teach myself all that I can in the kitchen brings me to the uncharted territories of liquor, then why on earth should I run the other way? Not like I’m turning myself into a drunkard or anything!

Come to think of it, the first good bottle of liquor I have splurged on is still lying unopened in my pantry. Writing this now has just reminded me of the bottle of Cointreau waiting to jump right into one of the gazillion recipes I have bookmarked to try. Funnily enough I even made a list of recipes that contain it but haven’t had the chance to make any of them since I brought that bottle home. I have a list of recipes containing whiskey too, but most of the recipes I’ve come across end up getting listed under rum. So if I were to buy another bottle in the near future, rum seems like one of the safer choices given the amount of recipes that make use of it.

I have previously used rum to make a tropical-flavoured ice cream before, as well as this banging cake that everyone adored (myself included!), and I must say I am really growing to love rum as an ingredient. I love how it gives that light melodiously fruity tickle in the tastebuds, and with this particular recipe, that fruitiness was elevated thanks to how the rum was turned into a soak for the raisin.

Before making the ice cream, you take some rum and a thick piece of orange peel and bring them to a simmer with some raisins. Then you just leave the raisins to soak all that goodness in until they are plump.

The rum soak itself will also have absorbed the sweetness of the raisins as well as the citrusy orange taste– which I would later on find out becomes a match made in heaven– and this is what you take and mix in with your custard to flavour it. The results are awesome enough that my younger brother texts me every time he has a serving of this ice cream, simply because he can’t stop raving about that lovely orange undertone and aftertaste carried by the rum.

Until making this ice cream I haven’t even considered best brands and such when it came to rum, having always used a local brand with positive results. But then again I have tasted rum-soaked desserts from five-star establishments before and the flavour of the rum they use is way more complex, way more delicious.

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Nestle Drumstick Review

Coned ice creams aren’t new to the market by any means, but the new Nestle #Drumstickdares to be a cut above the others. Nestle’s latest offering features bold flavours and is chock full of all the yummy add-ins we love with our ice cream. Nestle was kind enough to send me a box of their new treasures to try out, so now let’s see if indeed these new Drumsticks live up to the hype.

You can click on the below photo to enlarge the image.

When I saw these photos of the ice cream’s anatomy, I thought it would only be fair to do a comparison with the actual product. Using the Pistachio Almond Caramel Drumstick, you can see that it does indeed contain everything that the press materials say, from the nuts on top, to the caramel swirls in the ice cream itself, down to the oozing chocolate at the bottom of the cone!

Nestle Drumsticks is actually having a promo until July 6th where you are asked to text the code on your purchased ice cream’s lid. This earns you a raffle entry for a chance to win awesome prizes! You can find the full mechanics here.

My personal favourite in the bunch is probably this Choco-Almond Vanilla Drumstick. I love chocolate, I love almonds, and of course vanilla is always great. This is essentially my nostalgia-inducing classic flavours rolled into one ice cream, so it’s understandable why I like it.

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