This isn't a very high-tech toy, but it makes the best chocolate ice
cream in the world. It's a relatively inexpensive Cuisinart ICE device
which has a fancy bowl with some sort of liquid jelly inside that
freezes and holds its cool temperature for a while. And there isn't much
to making ice cream. I have made all kinds, but my current favourite is
this recipe I put together:
- 2 whole eggs
- 1.5 cups of heavy cream
- 1 cup of butter milk
- 1 pinch of salt
- 4 tablesoons of sugar
- 1 block (8-10 ounces?) of Trader Joe's broken Ghiradelli dark chocolate
- 1 block (8-10 ounces?) of Trader Joe's broken Ghiradelli milk chocolate
- 2 drops of almond extract
Heat up the butter milk in a pot and add the chocolate. Keep stirring and make sure it doesn't burn, although the slightly burnt flavour ,if you do happen to burn it, adds character to the ice cream. Once melted into a smooth ganosh-like consistency, stir in the sugar, salt and the almond extract and remove from the heat and let it sit for a bit.
In a clean bowl, whip the eggs for about 3 minutes, add in the cream and whip for another minute or 2. Finally pour the warm chocolate mixture into your whipped eggs and cream mixture and put the bowl in your fridge for an hour or two to cool it down. Trying to make ice cream right away with a warm starting point doesn't work very well. You can stick it in the freezer to speed it up a bit too. When it is cool, take your freezer bowl out and put it on the motor thing and pour your mixture into the bowl. Wait 20-25 minutes and you will have something resembling soft-ice. It's very good at this point, but another 3-4 hours in the freezer and it is perfect.
The secret is of course the pound+ of good chocolate or so that went in which is about double the chocolate of any of the suggested recipes I have seen. Not much sugar is needed because I use half milk chocolate. If you are using all dark or bittersweet, you'll need more sugar. I like the combination of the slightly salty butter milk and chocolate. You can use regular milk and/or lighter cream. However, the fat in the cream is what gives you that rich smooth ice cream taste and texture. If you want to add nuts or fruit, do it right at the end of the 25 minutes and just let them stir in for 30 seconds. If you put them in at the start they tend to clog things up.
This toy makes excellent frozen drinks and soft sherberts as well.