Week 28 - Nancy Drew's Old Clock Ice Cream Pie
In week 28 I chose to make something from the 1976 edition of "The Nancy Drew Cookbook: Clues to Good Cooking" by Carolyn Keene. I'm a huge fan of Nancy Drew books and have read all 56 books from the classic series. I have a complete set of the classic yellow-bound books, a few of the older volumes from the 1930s, as well as a Nancy Drew lunchbox, so when I found the cookbook a few years ago I didn't hesitate to pick it up for my collection.
My Nancy Drew collection
This is a kids cookbook, so all of the recipes are pretty simple to make. Most of the recipes are named after the book titles, such as "Mysterious Letter Chili" or after characters from the books, like "George's "Keep In Shape" Grapefruit" or "Bess's Secret Chocolate Waffles". I find these two particularly amusing, because in the books they always felt the need to mention poor Bess's plumpness and George's thin athletic figure. The book is peppered with little sidebar items such as "Nancy's Tasty Tips" and recipe substitution suggestions. There are a few black and white drawings but no photos. It's a fun cookbook, but I would have loved a more interesting color illustration that matched the book series, rather than the rather bland photo that graces this cover..
"The Nancy Drew Cookbook: Clues to Good Cooking" by Carolyn Keene, 1976 edition.
A spread of the book, including the recipe for Old Clock Ice Cream Pie
For this week, I chose to make Old Clock Ice Cream Pie. The recipe was actually for a 8 inch pie, but we didn't really need a whole pie between the two of us, so I decided to cut the recipe and make two smaller pies. The recipe also called for either frozen strawberries or raspberries, but I had just gone cherry picking so decided to use fresh cherries instead.
Cherry picking in Hollis, NH
The ingredients for Old Clock Ice Cream Pie
The first part of the recipe was to make a pie shell from crushed Oreos. I didn't want to have a large amount of cookies left over, so I bought a small package of mini Oreos. The smaller cookies had less cream filling than regular-sized Oreos so the cookie crumbs didn't stick together as much as they should so I had to add a bit of milk to moisten them. Once in the pans, I baked the shells in the oven for a few minutes and then let them cool.
The filling was simply softened vanilla ice-cream with the fruit mixed in. It certainly wasn't hard to do, but I don't know why this recipe over-complicated things. The filling could have just been flavored ice cream and the result would have been the same. I used the cherries that I had picked a few days earlier, as well as a bit of cherry juice to make the cherry flavor a bit stronger. Once the shells were filled, I decorated them with some chocolate sprinkles and let them set up in the freezer.
Oreo crust shells
The shells filled with the ice cream filling
In the cookbook, the recipe suggests that you can add sprinkles to form "hands" to make the pie look like the face of a clock, I guess they had to figure out a way to mix in the "old clock" theme somehow. I used such small pie pans, so making the hands with sprinkles was rather difficult. Instead I decorated the top with a couple of cherries with the stems still on, to form the clock face. The pies were delicious and easy to make, so I expect to make these again. I think making these with other flavors like chocolate or mint ice cream would be wonderful.
One of the final pies with cherry clock hands
Cookbook: "The Nancy Drew Cookbook: Clues to Good Cooking" by Caroline Keene, 1976
Recipe: Old Clock Ice Cream Pie
Difficulty: Very Easy
Alterations: The recipe called for frozen strawberries or raspberries, but I used fresh-picked cherries instead. I also reduced the recipe to make two small pies instead of one large one.
Results: Excellent! Chris really liked these as well and requested they be made again.
Make Again: Yes, but I would probably just use flavored ice cream rather than taking vanilla ice cream and mixing in fruit or other flavors.