Prue Leith's Pro-Tip For Adding Cake To Store-Bought Ice Cream

You probably know Prue Leith from her time as a judge on both "Great British Menu" and "The Great British Bake Off," but you may also know her from her cookbooks. One of those cookbooks, "Life's Too Short to Stuff a Mushroom," features a pro-tip for adding cake to store-bought ice cream to make an even more decadent sweet treat.

Leith's recipe for this is called "Christmas Cake Ice Cream" because it mixes pieces of traditional British Christmas cake (a cake that consists of a variety of dried fruits, often soaked with brandy or rum) with vanilla ice cream and extra brandy. While you can definitely stick closely to Leith's recipe, it also contains general tips that you should keep in mind when you want to add cake pieces to store-bought ice cream.

Before you get started, there are three things that you're going to want to pop in the freezer: The leftover cake that you're going to be incorporating, as well as the mixing bowl and the loaf pan (or whichever container) that you're going to freeze the cake-infused ice cream in. Leith suggests these tips because the cake pieces will be easier to mix into the ice cream when frozen since they will have hardened and won't crumble as easily when mixed.

One other tip to keep in mind — which Prue Leith also mentions in the recipe — is to not over-mix. If you over-mix, you may end up crumbling the cake pieces. You want the final result to have fairly big chunks of cake, so that you can actually taste the cake prominently and experience the texture. That being said, one of the best parts about mixing cake into ice cream yourself is getting to decide just how big you want the pieces of cake. So feel free to play around with how big you want the chunks to be.

Additionally, Leith recommends using "soft-scoop ice cream" so that you can mix the cake in easily without having to let the ice cream melt first. Soft-scoop ice cream is an ice cream common in the U.K. that's made with less fat and more air than hard ice cream. If you can't find that, use this simple hack to soften ice cream: Run a knife under hot water, then use the knife to cut, both vertically and horizontally, into the ice cream to soften it up. Or, you can place the ice cream in the fridge for about 30 minutes beforehand.

Otherwise, all that's left to decide is which cake flavor you want to pair with which ice cream flavor. Perhaps you'll add chocolate cake into chocolate ice cream for a double-chocolate experience or add lemon cake into vanilla ice cream for a zesty treat.