My first scoop

The days are getting hotter and I’m yearning for something cool every evening. I have a craving for ice cream come every summer and one of my favorite past time during those hot summer days is to visit cafés and order scones of ice creams of my favorite flavor or simply sipping iced coffee while watching the beautiful day passes me by. I remembered the other day that my boyfriend mentioned something about his mum used to make ice cream herself and I wondered whether she still has her ice cream maker. It must be my lucky day when I asked her about it and she led me to the cellar and pulled out a huge time-yellowed box containing her more-than-10yr-old ice cream machine. She wasn’t sure whether it’s still functioning because the last time that she has made any ice cream with it was when my boyfriend was still a child.
So, being the optimistic me, I decided to give it a try. My first homemade ice cream will be a chocolate ice cream of course because I can always get use of some extra kick of endorphin . I followed the recipe that came together with the ice cream machine and it turned out surprisingly good! Although I improvised a little because I was short of chocolate, I added two teaspoons full of cocoa powder instead.

Below is the chocolate ice cream recipe adapted from the recipe book by GIRMI:

Simple homemade chocolate ice cream

You need:
2 fresh eggs
300ml of crème fraîche (fresh cream)
300ml of milk
125g granulated sugar
1tbsp white flour
100g of bittersweet cooking chocolate
1tsp vanilla essence
1 pinch of salt

Preparation:
1. Pour the milk and flour into a saucepan and bring to a boil.
2. Add the chocolate (already melted) into the liquid, mix well, remove from the heat and add the vanilla essence.
3. Cover the saucepan and leave for about 20mins.
4. Separately, mix the sugar and a pinch of salt in with the eggs with a mixer until a soft mixture is obtained and then slowly add the chocolate liquid, stirring well.
5. Cook over a low flame for a few minutes stirring continuously until the mixture thickens.
6. Remove from the heat, allow to cool completely and add the fresh cream.
7. To avoid lumps from forming, before adding the cream to the mixture, mix a little sugar into the fresh cream. Or add a little of the mixture to the fresh cream.*
8. Pour the mixture into the ice cream can of your ice cream machine and switch it on according to the manufacturer instruction.

* After mixing them together, I still have little lumps from the fresh cream in the mixture, so I just use a hand mixer to stir the chocolate-liquid with the cream to get rid of the lumps.

However one thing that I noticed was that the ice cream turned out quite hard after putting it into the freezer. So before eating, I gotta take it out from the freezer for about 5minutes at room temperature before it is soft enough for me to spoon it out smoothly.

According to the ice cream guru, you can add some alcohol like vodka or kirsch liquor depending on the flavor you’re making prior to churning the ice cream to make the ice cream softer. This is because the freezing point of these alcohols is much lower than the usual freezing temperature of home freezers.

I’ll bear that in mind and am looking forward to making more ice creams in the future! It’s so much fun churning your own ice cream .