Super-rich chocolate ice cream experiment/accident

Mark Bittman, in How to Cook Everything*, has a recipe for amazing, amazing chocolate sorbet.  He calls it something like "the most bang for your buck" in the dessert world.

It uses cocoa, sugar, and water.  That's it. 

I've made it, and it's decadent. 

Inspired by this, I decided to try to make chocolate ice cream using cocoa, instead of using chocolate I'd chopped and melted into the single cream.

It was much thicker than I expected, so I had to add extra milk before churning, but my gosh, was it Divine.

It also is sublime paired with raspberry sorbet.  

I plan to try this again soon.  I have to think about how to tweak it -- if at all?  Not sure yet.

1 cup cocoa
1 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1/2 tsp cornflour / cornstarch (optional; see below)
300 ml single cream
300 ml double cream
milk as needed

We combined the cocoa, half the sugar, and the single cream in a saucepan and heated to not-quite-boiling. 

While it was heating, we beat the egg yolks, the rest of the sugar, and the cornflour together.

We poured a little of the heated liquid into the bowl with the egg mixture, beat it together, then added the rest.

After it was all well-mixed, we poured it all back into the saucepan and heated, stirring, until it was just boiling.  Note: this works only if you have used cornflour.  If you have not used cornflour, custard instructions say to heat until it coats the back of a wooden spoon.  This is so thick, that method would not have worked.

While we were heating, it was so thick, we added the double cream.  (Usually I would not add this until just before putting it into the ice cream maker.)

Removed it from the heat, then transferred to a glass casserole in a larger glass casserole full of water.  Once it was room temperature, we took it out of the larger dish and put the smaller dish containing the mixture in the refrigerator for an hour / until cold.

Things got interesting again: when we took it out of the refrigerator, the mix was too thick to get it into the ice cream maker.

I put it all in our 1-liter measuring cup as usual -- with some persuasion! -- then added milk until I could stir the mixture with a spatula or wooden spoon and it was well-mixed.  Then I could get it into the ice cream maker.

This took even less time in the ice cream maker than the ginger ice cream. 

When it was done, and then later from the freezer, it was dark, rich, smooth, and intense.  Altogether delightful.

As I mentioned, even more delightful when paired with raspberry sorbet. 

Enjoy!!


*except gooseberries