I scream, you scream

For Mother's Day, my magnificent husband-and-father-of-my-children got me exactly what I asked for: the Cuisinart Duo Ice Cream (etc.) Maker. A note to husbands everywhere: I don't care what conventional wisdom says about appliances not being "romantic" or "thoughtful." To me (because I don't dilly-dally or beat around the bush about it) the most thoughtful and romantic gift is the one that's exactly what I asked for. It doesn't get any better than that.

So anyhow, I got this ice cream maker, and seriously, I love it. I've made 8 quarts of various flavors (and levels of success) so far. One of the most successful was the chocolate ice cream (aside from it being not fully set when we took it out of the maker, but that's because the tubs didn't have time to properly refreeze between batches -- it set up just fine in the freezer). It had a really rich chocolatey flavor and was super easy to make. Wanna know my secret? You know you do.

Let us being by being perfectly honest: I am inherently lazy, and also, I hate to wait (I blame microwave oven technology for this). I don't mind doing things that take a lot of effort, but if there's an easier way, I will find it. And if it takes a lot of effort, it better have a pretty immediate payoff. So when I found all of these recipes that involve melting down the chocolate etc. and then making sure everything's super cool before it goes into the ice cream maker, I wanted no truck with that nonsense. But I (and my naggy little three year old :) ) wanted chocolate ice cream. What to do? Wheels began turning in my little noggin. Ice cream is milk (well, and heavy cream -- that was another "ice cream learning experience"), right? You make hot chocolate with milk, right? There's no real reason it has to be hot, right? Hey! Hot cocoa mix and milk/cream = immediate gratification low effort chocolatey goodness! So, my vanilla ice cream recipe calls for 1 3/4 cups heavy cream and 3/4 cup whole milk (except I use reduced fat because I already have two kinds of milk in my house and I'm not buying a third because that is just Crazy Talk) (20 oz. of liquid total). My hot chocolate mix calls for 1 scoop per 8oz of liquid, which would be 2 1/2 scoops of mix. I like very chocolatey ice cream, so I round up to three scoops of hot chocolate mix. Mix it all together (without heating the milk/cream), dump it in the ice cream maker, turn on and wait. Voila!

Please note that this does NOT work as well for frozen yogurt. Possibly the yogurt I used was just extra yogurt-y, but the chocolate seems to both bring out and clash with the yogurt tanginess. But for ice cream (and cream ice, which is what you get if you use reduced fat milk for all of the liquid), it's da bomb. Da chocolate bomb. Mmmmm...chocolate munitions...

posted by Laura Y. @ 7:56 AM