Death by chocolate? Yes, please!

Honestly, I couldn’t think of a better way to go.

This ice cream is easy to make, and gets its luxurious chocolate flavor from a generous amount of cocoa powder, chocolate chips, and chocolate liqueur. It actually really tastes just like frozen chocolate ganache.

Frozen. Chocolate. Ganache.

(For real.)

Breakstone’s sour cream adds a little extra creaminess and tang. The chocolate liqueur keeps the ice cream soft and scoopable right out of the freezer—which makes it a perfect solution for midnight chocolate emergencies.

Vote Hungry Mouse!

OK, so here’s the deal.

This is recipe is part of my entry in the Breakstone’s Battle of the Kitchen Bloggers, hosted by Sandra Lee. (Yep, the same folks who hosted last year’s Triple Churned Challenge.)

For the Showdown, Kraft invited me and 2 other bloggers to duke it out. Picture American Idol meets Iron Chef and you’ve kind of got the idea. (Our secret ingredient? Breakstone’s Triple Churned Sour Cream.)

Check out my appetizer, Sweet & Spicy Coconut Shrimp, and my entree, Roasted Garlic & Spinach Pizza.

Our last challenge? Dessert. With sour cream.

This was a no brainer. Sour cream goes remarkably well with all sorts of sweet ingredients, from chocolate to fruit. Basically, it adds tang and depth.

In honor of my forthcoming cookbook

In honor of my forthcoming cookbook, Slushed, (which is all about how to make alcohol-infused frozen desserts), I figured I’d go where my kung fu is strongest right now: Ice cream.

The participating bloggers have a chance to win a cash prize (1^st place is $350, 2^nd place is $250, and 3^rd place is $150).

Enter to win!

As part of the Holiday Showdown, you can enter win a handful of different prizes. If you enter, you’ll have a chance to win a $50 gift card (one winner each week).

You’ll also automatically be entered to win a grand prize of $2,500!

Sound enticing? I thought it might. Click here to enter to win. You can go back and vote and enter every day!

Alrighty, let’s make some ice cream!

Triple Chocolate Ice Cream

2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
6 egg yolks
½ cup sugar
½ cup Breakstone’s Sour Cream
¼ cup chocolate liqueur

Makes about 1 ½ quarts

Make the chocolate base

Heat the heavy cream and milk in a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed pot until the mixture just starts to steam. Keep an eye on it. Don’t let it even start to simmer.

Remove from the heat and whisk in the cocoa powder and chocolate chips.

Let it sit for five minutes, whisking occasionally, until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is uniform.

Make the custard

Put the egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl. Whisk until smooth.

Slowly ladle the hot chocolate mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly to combine.

This is called “tempering.” Basically, you’re raising the temperature of the egg yolks slowly, so they stay liquid (and don’t turn into a scrambled mess).

When you’ve almost all of it, transfer the mixture back to your pot.

Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly, until the mixture reaches 170 degrees on a candy thermometer. Whatever you do, don’t let the mixture boil.

Strain the mixture into a large bowl to get rid of any tiny bits of cooked egg. (Don’t freak out if you see a few. It happens, and it won’t hurt a thing. That’s why you’re straining it.)

Whisk in the sour cream and chocolate liqueur.

Cool the mixture over an ice bath (fit your bowl into a larger bowl filled with ice, then whisk the mixture), or do what I usually do: Strain the mixture into a large pan, which will disperse the heat really quickly.

Pop the bowl into the fridge to chill it completely, anywhere from 4-6 hours.

Make the ice cream

Process the mixture in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Every machine is a little different. Read your instructions so you know how yours works.

For my 2-quart Cuisinart model, that goes a little something like this…

(Waiting is always the hardest part.)

(Yum, right?!?)

Transfer to a container and freeze overnight.

Serving tip

For an over-the-top treat, serve adult sundaes drizzled with warm hot fudge and a shot of Godiva liqueur.

Please vote for me!

Click here to enter to vote and enter to win.

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Hands down, my favorite dessert has always been a dish of good vanilla ice cream drizzled with honey.

Kinda boring for a food writer, right?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ll happily consume your fancy final courses. Give me your tortes and tartes, your cheese plate composé with matched dessert wines, your convoluted, sugary sculptures surrounded by foam, gold leaf, and three kinds of garnish.

Sure.

But honestly?

The dessert that I most enjoy—and have for years—is a dish of rich, creamy vanilla draped with a spoonful or two of good honey. Sitting barefoot in the living room close to midnight. With a glass of wine, my two little wolves, and Family Guy reruns on cable.

There’s just something so delicious about the combination of creamy cold vanilla and honey, first thick and chewy when it hits the ice cream, then melding together as it melts.

Nectar and ambrosia? Absolutely, in my book.

For someone who’s currently writing a cookbook about frozen desserts, you’d think I’d be sick of ice cream already.

It hasn’t happened yet. I’m not gonna hold my breath, either. (Get ready for lots of B-roll recipes that didn’t make the final cut for the manuscript.)

This honey-infused ice cream has always been one of my favorite flavors. I actually get a little territorial about it. (I’ll stop just short of pulling a Cleopatra and filling the tub with the stuff.)

Ingredients matter

Especially when a recipe only calls for 4 or 5 of them. Use milk & cream from the farm down the road, plus local honey, and your ice cream will be that much more amazing. I even used my heirloom vanilla extract, which I’ve had going since 2002.

For this particular batch, I used what I had in the fridge, which was a combination of those things. The milk came from Richardson’s, a local dairy.

I used the honey I’m currently sweetest on (far from local, I know): Desert Mesquite. Find it at Trader Joe’s. It’s not flowery or cloyingly sweet. There’s almost a smokiness to it. Their brand is also pretty inexpensive, as big pots of honey go.

Equipment, etc.

Now, you can make ice cream without an ice cream maker and candy thermometer, but take it from me: Both will make your life a lot easier.

Get a candy thermometer. You’ll thank me later. You can find them at Target, Walmart, etc., or Amazon. They’re like $13 or so, and are well worth the investment.

The candy thermometer is going to help you know when the custard for your ice cream is cooked. (So no more of that imprecise, “cook until it coats the back of a spoon” business. Sure, your custard will do that, too. When it hits 170 degrees.)

So how’s the book manuscript coming?

Good question.

I’m wrapping up the first draft now (insanely quick, right?), and am so, so, so happy with it. I’m sorry I’ve been away, but recipe development and writing (on top of my full-time day job) have kept me hopping.

Over the last two months, I’ve made literally hundreds of quarts of frozen treats, from ice cream and gelato to sorbet and frozen cocktails. I’ve worked my way through broken custards and disastrous flavor combos. I’ve even had to sweat through a couple of power outages in the dog-days of summer, crossing my fingers that the juice would come back on before all my test batches melted.

I’m stoked to share some of the recipes that didn’t make it into the book with you. Stay tuned.

Milk & Honey Ice Cream

Makes about 1 quart

6 egg yolks
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1/4 cup honey
2 Tablespoons vanilla extract

Separate the eggs

Grab your eggs. Separate them, using a fancy egg separator, or your hand if you don’t mind getting a bit gooey. Save those whites for up to a day in the fridge. (Use them to make an insanely good omelet, an angel food cake, or homemade meringues.)

To separate an egg, crack an egg into your (very clean) paw. Let the white drip through your fingers into a bowl. Toss the yolk into another bowl.

Beat the yolks well. Set them aside for a minute while you deal with the cream and milk.

Scald the milk and cream

Put the heavy cream and milk in a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed pot.

Set the pot on the stove over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until it just starts to steam and bubble at the edges. Whatever you do, don’t let it boil.

While you’re waiting for the milk to heat up, grab a large bowl or pan. (I almost always use a 9 x 13 glass baking dish.) Pour the honey into it and set aside.

Fill a larger bowl or pan with ice and set it aside. You want the first bowl/pan to be able to fit inside the bowl/pan with the ice. This will make your ice bath.

Put your strainer with it. You’ll want both close at hand once the custard is cooked.

Temper the egg yolks

Take the warm mixture off the heat. Grab those beaten egg yolks.

Slowly (and I mean slowly, or you’ll wind up with a horrible bowl of scrambled eggs), drizzle the hot mixture into the beaten yolks, whisking constantly.

Do this until you’ve added most of the hot mixture to the yolks. This is called tempering, which basically means you’re raising the temperature of the yolks slowly, so they don’t solidify.

When you’ve added most of the hot mixture to the yolks, transfer it back to the pot.

Cook the custard to 170 degrees

Slap your trusty candy thermometer on the inside of the pot and stick it back on the stove over medium heat. Don’t let the thermometer touch the bottom of the pot, or you can get a false reading. Cook, whisking constantly, until the mixture reaches 170 degrees.

So you’re not scrambling, your counter should look something like this. (Custard cooking, strainer, bowl/pan with honey, ice bath off to the side.)

When the custard reaches 170 degrees, yank it off the heat. (Don’t let it go higher. It will start to separate quickly and will get a really strong, egg-y flavor.)

Pour the hot custard immediately through your strainer into the bowl/pan with the honey in it. The strainer will catch any bits of cooked egg that may have formed.

Whisk to incorporate the honey.

Whisk in the vanilla.

Set the bowl/pan with the custard in the bowl/pan filled with ice. Whisk until the mixture cools to room temp. (My apologies, my pics with the ice bath didn’t come out at all. I was shooting in the late afternoon and the light near my sink was dodgy.)

Taste it at this point. This is what your ice cream will taste like. Adjust the flavors now if need be. (Add more honey if you want it sweeter, etc. Don’t add more than 4 Tablespoons total of vanilla extract.)

Pop the mixture in the fridge to chill completely, about 4-6 hours. You can cheat and try to flash cool it in the freezer. Just keep a close eye on it so it chills, but doesn’t freeze.

When it’s cold, it will have thickened considerably.

Process the ice cream in your machine

When the mixture has chilled completely, process it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

And your ice cream maker will do the rest of the work.

When it’s done, you’ll have something that’s thick but not frozen solid. This is just about the best soft-serve you’ll ever have, so if you’re inclined, scoop a big bowl and go to town.

Transfer it to a freezer-safe container.

Freeze overnight to let it firm up completely. (And that’s it! You just made ice cream!)

Serve & enjoy!

This ice cream goes great with a big cup of tea and some shortbread cookies or fresh berries. Enjoy!

(We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog posts.)

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OK, this started with a recipe I spotted in Cook’s Country magazine for easy chocolate ice cream. You know I’m a sucker for unusual, short-cut recipes that promise delicious results. I couldn’t resist giving it a whirl.

This stuff is delicious, alright, but I wouldn’t call it ice cream. It’s more like frozen chocolate mousse, minus the eggs. Which in my book almost makes it better than ice cream. (Almost.) If you make it, let me know if you agree.

At any rate, whatever you call it, this stuff is to die for.

Because it’s made with whipped cream, it’s light and airy. (And because it’s made with whipped cream, it’s also ridiculously creamy and rich.) Sweetened condensed milk contributes to the velvety texture and adds subtle caramel-y notes that pair really well with the chocolate.

The basic process for Frozen Chocolate Mousse

So here’s what we’re doing for this one: Melt the chocolate in the microwave. Stir in the condensed milk and a little espresso and vanilla. Fold in a bunch of whipped cream. Freeze. Inhale.

I made a similar strawberry ice cream (no cook, whipped cream folded into berries in sugar syrup then frozen) a while back, but I processed that in my ice cream machine.

This is even easier. Just make the chocolate mousse mixture, then pop it into the freezer. No ice cream maker required. It really does take about 10 minutes.

Let it thaw a little before serving

This is important.

Straight out of the freezer, this stuff hard to scoop and a little bit chalky in texture. Let it sit on the counter for 5 or 10 minutes, however, and it softens up *just* enough to scoop.

Condensed milk versus evaporated milk

I’m sorry if this is obvious, but I’ve made this mistake a million times. It’s really easy to grab the wrong can at the market if you’re in a rush.

What you want for this recipe is sweetened condensed milk—NOT evaporated milk, which is thin and unsweetened. Sweetened condensed milk is used in all sorts of baked goods and candies. I like Eagle Brand, but use your favorite.

Sweetened condensed milk is whole milk that’s been mixed with a lot of sugar, then heated til it evaporates by a little more than half. The resulting mixture is syrupy, slightly caramel colored…

…and very, very thick. Once it’s opened, store it in an airtight container in the fridge. It’ll keep for about 5 days.

Frozen Chocolate Mousse

Adapted from Cook’s Country

1 tsp. instant espresso powder
1 Tbls. hot water
4 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup condensed milk (NOT evaporated milk)
1/2 tsp. vanilla
pinch of salt
1 1/4 cups heavy cream

Yields about 1 quart

Rehydrate the espresso

Grab your instant espresso powder. I keep mine in the freezer.

Put it in a small bowl.

Add the water and stir to dissolve. Set it aside for a sec.

Melt the chocolate with the condensed milk

Chop up the chocolate into smallish pieces. Put them in a large, microwave-safe bowl. Add the sweetened condensed milk.

Toss in the espresso, vanilla, and a pinch of salt.

Mix it all up with a spatula or wooden spoon until it’s fairly uniform.

Zap it in the microwave on high for a minute or two, stopping it every 10 or 20 seconds to stir. (If you don’t have a microwave, melt these ingredients together in a heatproof bowl over a pot of gently simmering water.)

When the chocolate has completely melted, you’ll wind up with a very thick paste, like this. Set it aside for a minute while you make the whipped cream. (As it sits, it will thicken a little. That’s just fine.)

Make the whipped cream

Put the cream in the bowl of your stand mixer (or a large mixing bowl if you’re using a handheld electric mixer, or are whipping by hand). Beat on high until it thickens and eventually forms soft peaks.

Wait, what’s a soft peak?

Good question. When your whipped cream is starting to get thick, stop your mixer for a sec and pull the beater out of the bowl. Hold it up. If the whipped cream on the beater is kind of thick but still flops over, you’ve got a soft peak. (If you kept beating, you’d reach stiff peaks, which means your whipped cream would stand straight up.)

You want it to look about like this:

Fold the whipped cream into the chocolate

When your whipped cream is ready, take about one third of it and put it in the bowl with the chocolate mixture.

Gently whisk it into the chocolate mixture until uniform.

The mixture should have thinned out considerably.

Put the rest of the whipped cream into the bowl.

With a rubber spatula, gently fold the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture. (You don’t want to squish all the air out of the whipped cream.)

Keep folding…

When the whipped cream is totally incorporated, you’ll wind up with a fluffy bowl of chocolate bliss. Of course, at this point, you need to be a responsible cook: Give it a taste to be sure that it’s, um, up to par.

Freeze the chocolate mousse

Transfer the chocolate mousse out into a freezer-safe container. I used a one-pound loaf pan.

Smooth the top down with a spatula.

Freeze the chocolate mousse

Cover it up with plastic wrap. Pop the pan in the freezer for at least six hours, preferably overnight.

Thaw, scoop, and serve your frozen mousse

When the chocolate mousse is frozen through, it’s ready to serve. Set it on the counter for 5 – 10 minutes to knock the chill off of it before you try to scoop it.

Enjoy!

A reader photo!

Update, March 22: Reader Jaclyn Breinlinger just made this recipe the other night and said it was so good! Here’s her mousse (thanks for the pic, Jaclyn!).

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Certain phrases are like a siren’s song for a person who loves to cook.

Well-marbled sirloin. Fresh peaches. Double-thick pork chop.

They make you salivate. They make you drop what you’re doing and drive you into the kitchen on a single-minded mission. “Perfect No-Cook Strawberry Ice Cream”—a recipe in this month’s Gourmet magazine—did just that to me.

When I finished the short article, I hunted around until I found my clogs, then made a bee-line for the back door to go track down some berries. No matter that we just moved and could barely see each other over the sea of boxes at the new Mouse House. I needed to make some ice cream. It was urgent.

The Angry Chef protested. “Ice cream? But Mouse, shouldn’t we be…?” (Fill in the blank. Unpacking. Organizing. Putting away my 10,000 pairs of shoes.)

“Yes! Right after I make this stuff. Gourmet says it doesn’t take long. Like 10 minutes. They say it’s perfect!”

(Have I mentioned that, even though I work in advertising, I’m ridiculously susceptible to suggestion?)

Happily, the article was accurate. This ice cream is really easy to throw together. The hard part is waiting for it to freeze completely, which takes a few hours.

I managed to locate the closest grocery store (thanks to the magic of GPS navigation on my iPhone), and made it back with a pound of good-looking strawberries in no time.

While I was out, The Angry Chef kindly fished around and found my ice cream maker, which is cherry red, making it relatively easy to locate in the mountains of cooking gear stacked in our back room.

About Philadelphia-Style Ice Cream

So, ice cream falls into two basic categories.

There’s custard-based ice cream, which starts out with a cooked egg custard. It’s rich and delicious, and is the stuff that most Americans think of first when they think of ice cream. It takes a little longer to make, and involves babysitting a mixture of eggs and milk over a water bath to be sure that it thickens enough—but not so much that it breaks into a curdle-y mess.

Then there’s Philadelphia-style ice cream—a.k.a. American-style or New York-style—which skips the custard altogether and is made from a simpler, uncooked mixture of cream, sugar, and flavorings. This kind of ice cream is completely eggless, which makes the texture lighter and the flavor more delicate than custard-based ice cream.

This particular No-Cook Strawberry Ice Cream tastes exactly (no, really…exactly) like frozen strawberry whipped cream. I suppose because that’s basically what it is. And because you only puree half the mixture, it’s dotted with bonus bits of luscious berries.

Since there are only a few ingredients, be sure to use the ripest strawberries you can get your paws on.

A tip for serving No-Cook Strawberry Ice Cream

While delicious, this ice cream is a wee bit chalky (weird, I know) when it’s frozen rock solid. Before serving, leave it on the counter for a few minutes to let it soften up, and it will loosen up a wee bit, making it much easier to scoop.

No-Cook Strawberry Ice Cream

Recipe from Gourmet Magazine, August 2009

1 lb. strawberries, trimmed + cut in half
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp. lemon juice
pinch of salt
2 cups heavy cream

Makes about 1 1/2 quarts

Make the strawberry ice cream mixture

Grab your berries. Nip the stems off, cut them in half, and put them in a medium-sized bowl.

Toss in the sugar and the salt.

Add the lemon juice.

With a potato masher (a couple of forks would work, too), mash the berries up with the sugar.

Let the mixture sit on the counter for about 10 minutes, mashing occasionally. After a few minutes, the berries will start to let out their juice, which will combine with the sugar and make a heavenly syrup.

After about 10 minutes, your berry mixture should look about like this:

Pour about half of it into your blender. Add the cream.

Blend until smooth.

Combine the puree and the rest of the berry mixture in a bowl.

Mix to combine well.

At this point, Gourmet tells you to chill the mixture for 3 to 6 hours.

This is to be sure that your ingredients are thoroughly cold when they go into your ice cream maker. Now, my cream was cold. And so were my berries. Which meant that my mixture was cold. So, I skipped this step. (If your mixture isn’t cold, pop it in the fridge until it is.)

Plus, I really didn’t want to wait. Siren’s song, and all that.

Freeze the strawberry ice cream

Pour the berries and cream mixture into your ice cream maker.

Process according to the manufacturer’s instructions. For my Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker, this means running the machine for about 25 minutes.

After a while, the mixture should get thicker, and look kind of like soft serve ice cream.

When it’s done, it should look about like this. Give it a taste or two. (If you’re like me, you’ll need a whole custard-cup full to ensure that it’s, um, good.)

Scoop the ice cream out into freezer-safe container. I like to use a stainless steel 1-lb. loaf pan.

Smoosh it down with a rubber spatula so that it’s relatively flat.

Press a piece of plastic wrap onto the surface and pop it into the freezer.

In a few hours (overnight, at worst), your ice cream should be frozen solid.

Enjoy your ice cream!

Like I said earlier, this stuff is a little chalky in consistency when it’s frozen solid. Leave it out on the counter for a few minutes to let it thaw slightly to normal ice cream consistency.

Inhale and enjoy!

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One of my favorite ways to enjoy summer berries is to make sorbet. If you’ve never made sorbet, you may be surprised by how easy it is to do at home. You can’t beat the flavor. Nothing in the supermarket even comes close.

Just puree a few cups of simple syrup with a few pints of fresh blackberries. Run the mixture through a strainer to trap all those pesky seeds. Then process it in an ice cream maker and freeze overnight.

All in all, it’s very little work for a frozen treat that’s bursting with fresh berry flavor (the berry mixture isn’t even cooked).

You’ll need 24 ounces of fresh blackberries for this recipe.

Blackberry Sorbet

1 1/4 cups sugar
1 cup water
24 oz. fresh blackberries
2 Tbls. fresh lemon juice

Makes about 1 quart of sorbet

Make the simple syrup

Combine the sugar and water in a medium-sized saucepan.

Set the pot on the stove over high heat. Whisk occasionally until the sugar dissolves.

Bring the mixture to a boil. Let it boil for maybe 2 minutes, just to be sure that all the sugar is dissolved.

Remove the pot from the heat. Cool the mixture to room temperature, then pop it in the fridge (or freezer, if you want to hurry it along) to chill it completely.

Puree the blackberries and simple syrup

When your simple syrup is completely chilled, you’re ready to make your sorbet. Grab your blackberries. Pick through them quickly and discard any that are bruised or otherwise suspect looking.

Put about half of the berries in the blender.

Pour in about half of the chilled simple syrup.

Puree on high for maybe 30 seconds, until the berries are completely liquified.

Your mixture should look about like this (kinda gross, but just you wait…):

Strain the blackberry mixture

Set a strainer over a large bowl. Pour the blackberry mixture through the strainer.

It’ll be fairly thick, so stir it with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon to push it through.

Push the berry pulp through the strainer with your spatula to squeeze out the last of the liquid.

Blend and strain the remaining blackberries and simple syrup. Then pour the lemon juice into the strained mixture. Stir to combine.

Freeze the sorbet mixture

Because you chilled the simple syrup, your mixture should still be fairly cold. Pour it into your ice cream maker. Process according to the manufacturer’s instructions. For my Cuisinart model, that means processing for about 25 minutes.

As the mixture processes, it’ll get thicker.

When it’s done, it should look about like this. (Like the texture of melted ice cream.)

Transfer it to a freezer-safe container. (I like to use a 1-lb. loaf pan.)

Smooth out the surface. Press a layer of plastic wrap onto the surface, then pinch it tight around the edges of the pan. Pop the pan into the freezer for at least few hours (ideally, overnight), until it’s completely frozen.

Scoop, serve and enjoy!

When your blackberry sorbet is completely frozen, it should look about like this.

It should be firm, but still very scoopable.

Enjoy!

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