August 4: We’re back from Jack’s house, and it was lovely lovely! Amazing weather, fun games, delicious food (more on that soon), Sylvie’s first ride down the Wisconsin River, campfire, prairie hike, frisbee, wet campers, and great company. I made chocolate ice cream for Sunday evening. It was…really good. So to ensure that others can enjoy the creamy chocolaty-ness, (and so I can find the recipe after I return the book to the library) I’ll share the recipe here.
Chocolate Ice Cream
From: The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz
(by the way, I’ve made three ice creams from this book – chocolate gelato and avocado too – and they’ve all been amazing)
2 cups heavy cream
3 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
5 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped (I used bittersweet)
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
5 large egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Warm 1 cup of the cream with the cocoa powder in a medium saucepan, whisking to thoroughly blend the cocoa. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer at a very low boil for 30 seconds, whisking constantly. Remove from the heat and add the chopped chocolate, stirring until smooth. Then stir in the remaining 1 cup cream. Pour the mixture into a large bowl, scraping the saucepan as thoroughly as possible, and set a mesh strainer on top of the bowl.
Warm the milk, sugar, and salt in the same saucepan. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm milk into the egg yolk, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.
Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula (note from Althea: really do stir and scrape constantly…I ended up with some cooked eggs on the bottom of the pan). Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the chocolate mixture until smooth, then stir in the vanilla. Stir until cool over an ice bath.
Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. (If the cold mixture is too thick to pour into your machine, whisk it vigorously to thin it out.)
(note from Althea: I made a double batch which worked fine until I tried to freeze the second half in the ice cream maker. The ice cream maker didn’t have enough cold left to successfully churn the second half, so it was more goopy than churned. Yet somehow, it was still delicous, and no one complained!)