To date, this is my best ice cream creation ever.
Read the instructions carefully because there are ingredients moving hither and thither!
You will need one sauce pan for heating things up. You will need a digital instant read thermometer (if you really want to play it safe and not cook the eggs!)
You will need a variety of bowls and one large bowl with water and ice in it for chilling a medium sized bowl which will contain the ice cream mix (for chilling)
Do yourself a favour and visualize the steps and the process – I needed to and it helped make this the best chocolate ice cream ever.
Chocolate Sauce
2 cups (500 ml) heavy 36% cream
7 oz semi-sweet Bernaud Callebaut cooking chocolate
1 cup (250ml) whole milk
Custard
3/4 cup (150g) white sugar
pinch of salt
5 large egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon instant espresso powder (optional)
Warm 1 cup of the cream – bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer for 30s
whisking constantly – remove from the heat and add the coarsely chopped
chocolate stirring until smooth.
Turn in the remaining cup of cream.
Pour the mixture into a large bowl – scraping as much of the goodness out and
set a mesh strainer on top of the large bowl (that also contains the dairy and chocolate mixture…)
Combine (and warm) the whole milk, sugar and salt into the now emptied saucepan. And in a separate medium bowl whisk together the egg yokes.
Slowly pour the warm milk, sugar, salt mixture into the egg yokes whisking constantly – then return this mixture of eggs, milk, sugar and salt into the saucepan.
Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heat proof spatula – monitoring the heat with an instant read digital thermometer – note as you heat this mixture do not under any circumstances exceed 170 degrees or you will cook the eggs.
Scrape the bottom as you stir until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula – again making sure you do not exceed 170 degrees. This is your custard.
Pour this “custard” through the strainer into the chocolate/cream mixture and stir until smooth.
Stir in the vanilla. Add 1/2 instant espresso powder if so inclined.
Stir and cool over an ice bath – that is, your bowl of chocolate custard mixture should be floating on a bigger bowl that is half filled with ice and water.
Chill the mixture thoroughly for 2 – 4 hours in the fridge.
Put the mixture into your ice cream maker following the manufacturers instructions.
I use a KitchenAid commercial mixer with the Ice Cream Cold Core attachment and it works the charm. Ice cream needs to be churned for around 25 minutes or so and there are some manual ice cream makers (like the Donvier but you need strong wrists to churn for 25+ minutes!)
Enjoy!