Cracker Jack and Ice Cream

I was watching the Food Channel the other night and I saw part of Rachel Ray's "30 Minute Meals." She had things cooking on the stove-top which I didn't see, but I caught her show as she was preparing the dessert.

The theme for her meal must have been a casual baseball dinner or something, because her dessert had two ingredients-- Cracker Jack and vanilla ice cream. (Now don't say "Yuck!" till you read the rest of this.)

What she did was take large scoops of very cold vanilla ice cream, about the size of baseballs, then she rolled the round scoops into the Cracker Jack so every part of the ice cream was covered and she could form the balls into nearly-perfect baseball-sized servings. Back into the freezer they went, till it was time for dessert.

Then she went back to finishing up her dinner, which I wasn't paying attention to and I can't even tell you what she was cooking because my mind was busy thinking of the Cracker Jack-covered ice cream.

I'm not a vanilla girl....... I've liked chocolate ice cream for as long as I can remember, and about the only time I'll try a new flavor is if the chocolate ice cream has either pineapple or pecans or fresh cherries mixed into it. In fact, if I could have an ice cream flavor made just for me, it would be Chocolate Cherry Pineapple-Pecan. But really, plain chocolate, if it's a good homemade ice cream without additives and preservatives, is just perfect.

So there I was, cooking salmon and mixing a salad (very healthy) and thinking about covering a golf-ball sized scoop of chocolate ice cream with Cracker Jack (sort of healthy, given the smaller serving of a golf ball instead of a baseball). The only problem was, I had no ice cream in the freezer, and I didn't have any Cracker Jack.

We don't often keep ice cream in the house, because we'd just keep eating it. Most of the time, I do have fat-free, sugar-free chocolate ice-pops (about 40 calories each), which gives you the taste of rich chocolate if you have a good imagination. I don't keep Cracker Jack in the house, for the simple reason that I'd keep eating it till it was gone. I've loved Cracker Jack sinced my dad bought me my first box when I was a kid. We had a deal--- I ate the Cracker Jack, he ate the peanuts. That was "way back when" a box of Cracker Jack was a little bigger than the individual-serving boxes they have now, and there were lots of peanuts along with the carmel-coated popcorn. I would guess the ratio of peanuts to popcorn back then was about 2 to 6. Now it's about 2 to 60.

Anyway, while my husband and I were eating dinner that night, I told him about the Cracker Jack-covered vanilla ice cream. He didn't think it sounded good, but I told him that chocolate ice cream covered in Cracker Jack would be worth a try. He looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. (My husband doesn't like Cracker Jack... but he does eat the peanuts when I have one of those small boxes.)

Last night, when my husband came home from work, what do you think he brought me?! A bag filled with half a dozen little boxes of Cracker Jack, and a pint of homemade chocolate ice cream from Goodies Creamery. As my Aunt Dolly would say: "My hero!"

So there I was last night at 10:30, with a small scoop of chocolate ice cream covered with Cracker Jack. The ice cream was a little soft by the time he got home and I wasn't going to wait and let it re-freeze with the Cracker Jack on it. I just sprinkled the Cracker Jack on top of it and tasted it. Absolutely delicious. Honestly. Unless I was making a special dessert for company, I wouldn't bother rolling the scoops in the Cracker Jack and re-freezing them. The soft ice cream was perfect with the crunchy Cracker Jack.

And just to make sure that it did indeed taste as delicious as I thought it did last night, I had the same thing for lunch today--- a very small scoop of ice cream with Cracker Jack on top of it. I'll tell you......... life may not get any better.