Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Chocolate ice cream done the wrong way

So, after making heart attack-inducing salted caramel ice cream, I decided to change things up a bit and make some chocolate ice cream using what I'd learned to make it less rich.

Problem? What I'd learned was not the right thing to learn.

I started out with this chocolate ice cream recipe from Gourmet. Kinda. Because I don't have a vanilla bean (just my vanilla extract from Mexico) and I was too lazy to find the right chocolate. I bought a bar of baking chocolate and added sugar.

BIG mistake #1: using a bar of unsweetened baking chocolate and just adding sugar.

Then, of course, I used up the last cup of heavy (read: butter-makin') cream, 2 cups of whole milk and 3/4 of a cup of water. And one egg.

BIG mistake #2: using just one egg. The egg doesn't make it rich; the egg keeps the ice cream from turning into a boulder in your freezer. Noted.

Blah-biddy-blah, I whipped it up essentially using the instructions from the salted caramel ice cream, added some semi-sweet chocolate chips and ended up with a dark chocolate goo that tasted and felt like a really thick, chocolatey pudding. A quick check on the innertubes confirmed that, minus the cornstarch I had, indeed made a pudding. Regardless, it tasted pretty good, so I set up the ice cream maker and started to pour the mess in. But then I stopped it briefly because of the mess it made and, well I think you know what happened next...I couldn't continue churning.

BIG mistake #3: turning off the ice cream maker's churn for even half a second. This is the SECOND time I have done this. I hope there is never a third.

By this time, I was tired and feeling pretty defeated. So I let the mess thaw and just poured it back into a bowl. And then set it in the freezer.

BIG mistake #4: just freezing that ice cream mix that was really a pudding means the yield was just a big frozen pudding. And with just one medium egg, it was hard as a rock.

Not only that, but it ceased to taste good. I don't know if by that time, I hated the shit so much that I just imagined it tasted bad or that something had actually happened to it. But even the husband didn't care for it. So I thawed out the boulder of "ice cream" and poured (scooped) it down the drain (24 hours later).

But I shall not be defeated. I have more milk and more heavy (whipping) cream at home and will, at some point find some decent chocolate.

Or I will just make vanilla ice cream and add those peaches I put in the freezer a month ago.

4 comments:

Lindsay said...

You should give this recipe a try: http://www.loveandoliveoil.com/2008/09/chocolate-coconut-milk-ice-cream.html. A nice lighter (and dairy-free) version of chocolate ice cream - and just as delicious! :)

michael, claudia and sierra said...

i love it when you do shit like this. it is totally endearing...

Almost Vegetarian said...

You invented frozen chocolate pudding boulder! Kewl!

In my ice cream machine, I invented crunchy ice cream. Crunchy from ice crystals which, you must agree, is much more creative than merely crunchy from, say, nuts or something one would actually want to crunch.

Where would the fun be in that, I ask you?

I now have great respect for both Ben and Jerry. They, alas, have none for me.

Sigh.

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