Turning Melted Ice Cream Into A Quick Fudge Is Almost Too Easy

A bowl of ice cream is a delicious yet time-sensitive dessert — maybe your eyes are bigger than your stomach and you've scooped more than you can consume in one sitting, or you sit down to savor the flavor of your frozen treat for so long that it becomes a bowl of soupy sadness. Whether it's an extra hot day or an extra creamy batch, melted ice cream can put a serious damper on your dessert experience. A quick solution would be to stick it back in the freezer, but refrozen ice cream has a different texture that can make ice cream seriously less enjoyable. Lucky for those with a sweet tooth, you can repurpose your melted ice cream into chocolatey fudge with only two ingredients.

Simply melt down a bowl of semi-sweet chocolate chips and combine them with your melted ice cream. After less than a minute in the microwave, stopping to stir every 20-30 seconds to smooth out any remaining chocolate chunks, you have a perfectly chewy bite of fudge. You will have to wait a few hours for the fudge to chill at room temperature, or you can stick it in the fridge for an hour to ensure you have the ideal fudge consistency.

All ice cream is guaranteed to melt at some point, but how long you have to enjoy it before transforming it into fudge is dependent on your flavor preference. One 2017 study at Furman University discovered that the melting rate of ice cream will vary greatly based on fat content. After comparing strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla flavors to test their melting rate, they discovered that vanilla melted the fastest, followed by chocolate, and then strawberry. The strawberry had the highest fat content, and the fruit chunks helped to retain its frozen form longer. All in all, you have between 10 and 30 minutes to enjoy your ice cream form before it becomes dessert soup.

Luckily, the melted ice cream fudge hack works with plenty of ice cream flavors, especially those that pair well with melted chocolate. Obviously, ice cream flavors like chocolate and vanilla will taste delicious in fudge form, but other fan favorites work just as well if you're willing to think outside the box. Add some chopped nuts to the top of your chocolate butter pecan fudge or a sprinkle of crumbled cookies to your mint chocolate chip fudge. Even fruity ice cream flavors that you wouldn't expect to blend well — like white chocolate raspberry or blueberry cheesecake can add a touch of tang to your chocolatey fudge, creating a flavor profile so complex, you won't believe it was only two ingredients.

If you aren't a fan of fudge, or you don't have quick access to chocolate chips, there are still plenty of ways to reconstruct your bowl of melted disappointment into new, innovative sweet treats. You may not be able to enjoy a scoop of ice cream when it's no longer frozen, but you can still enjoy desserts using the contents of melted ice cream when baking. For example, melted ice cream can replace butter and eggs when you're making cookies. Before tossing melted ice cream aside, consider turning it into sweet ice cream bread simply by adding flour, baking powder, and sprinkles.

Speaking of sprinkles, classic duos like birthday cake and ice cream can be taken one step further when you combine the ingredients together before baking. Melted ice cream can upgrade a boxed cake by adding additional moisture and creaminess. Nix the water and oil that traditional boxed cake recipes call for, and use your melted ice cream instead. Some bakers will purposefully melt ice cream in order to achieve this moist-cake hack.