I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream

This weekend brought a bit of study and a whole lotta baking (well, I had to get my procrastination quota in!). This one is a great recipe for spare egg yolks that you might have lying around.

This one is a bit of a play on the old favourite chocolate ice cream – of course, it would work supremely well as just that. But feeling a little Mexican, I thought I’d spice it up a bit. I’d say it’s a bit moussy, a bit creamy and very, very chocolate-y. You will need:

– 500ml thickened cream
– 100gm dark chocolate
– 20gm cocoa powder
– 130gm caster sugar
– 4 egg yolks
– 1 cinnamon stick
– half a teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg (or a bit more if you’re using pre-powdered as the fresh stuff is SUPER strong)
– 1 tsp chilli flakes (give or take, depending how you like it!)

Step 1 – just beat it: whack the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl and beat like crazy until the yolks are really creamy and pale. Bring your cream to the boil. At this point, add your cinnamon, nutmeg and chilli. Remove from heat and then pour slowly into the egg yolks, whisking constantly.

Eggs and sugar – light and creamy

Spice it up!

 

Step 2 – chocoholic: melt your chocolate and then stir it in to the egg yolk mixture. Add your cocoa at this point as well.

Step 3 – that’s pretty steep: return this thick, luscious molten chocolate-y mixture to your saucepan and give it some heat. Don’t let it boil, per se, just cook the mix until you can see little trails of steam coming outta the pot. At this point, remove your pot from the heat and just let it hang out – steep, if you will. Amazing flavours will come out of the cinnamon stick and the chilli will swirl through and mellow out.

Molten. Chocolate.

Step 4 – it’s a little bit chilly: have a taste – drooling yet? When the mixture has cooled, pour into your container of choice. I just went for a couple of old takeaway containers. Basically – the cool thing about this recipe is that you don’t need an ice cream maker. The only thing you need to do is take your ice cream out every hour and give it a nice little whisk around with a fork. The moisture in the cream means that little ice crystals will form as you freeze it. The point of an ice cream maker is that it is constantly churning your mixture as it freezes, so that ice crystals can’t form. By giving your ice cream a bit of a whisk around every hour, you’re just breaking up those ice crystals to make it nice and smooth.

Just eat it…

Step 5 – in a few hours, it’ll be naught but frozen. Take out and enjoy (the food coma you may get afterwards)