Chocolate Ice Cream

I'd made enough combination flavors in the past bunch of months (not all of which I've blogged about) that I just wanted to make chocolate. Just chocolate. Nothing-in-it-chocolate. I had eggs on hand, so I went with a custard-style recipe in A Perfect Scoop.

The recipe calls for unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder. The result is a really deep, smooth chocolate flavor. The recipe is pretty darn perfect. I wouldn't change it at all.

Chocolate peanut butter

I made the Lebovitz chocolate peanut butter ice cream again. I wasn't paying enough attention to it while it came to a boil and I burned a little bit of it. It didn't seem to matter, fortunately.

I don't know if I noticed this before but as long as it's not frozen solid, it doesn't feel cold on the tongue. It's an interesting thing. I don't understand it in the slightest but I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it has to do with fat content.

I served it for a group again. It's definitely a crowd-pleasing flavor. I also served coconut mango. This flavor was actually about two months old. I think the age of the ice cream wasn't perceptible.

Chocolate Banana Peanut Butter

After making a successful peanut butter banana, I thought, well, CHOCOLATE peanut butter banana should work, too, and be just as easy to make.

I did go a different direction with the recipe. Instead of adding chocolate to the peanut butter banana recipe, I added bananas to the Lebovitz chocolate peanut butter recipe I love. I didn't follow it exactly. The recipe calls for heating everything to a boil. Instead, I dumped everything into the blender and put it on puree for about five minutes.

This was another success. The bananas add just a little more smoothness, I think. Two bananas seemed to be the right amount to keep all three flavors balanced. But, really, standing on the shoulders of giants as I did, it was very easy for this to work well.

I think I've taken this about as far as I can. I'd like to work on making something similar to the bittersweet chocolate I had at Rancatore's.

Peanut Butter Banana

I made peanut butter banana late last week. Seems like an obvious flavor but I'd never made it before. It occurred to me after making PB and banana.

I based the recipe on David Lebovitz's PB recipe. I thought that recipe was already a little too sweet and since I was adding two bananas, I lowered the sugar to 2/3 C. Emily Luchetti and Lebovitz both have you roasting the bananas to different degrees before using them but I skipped that. I put all the ingredients into the blender and left it on for a good long while, more than five minutes. I wanted the texture to be as smooth as possible.

I'm really pleased with the results. Smooth texture. The flavors are nice and they're balanced. I'll have to make this again. Also, I might shoot for PB chocolate banana next.

Roasted Banana

As part of the fun for Reach the Beach, I made ice cream sandwiches. I used peanut butter cookies and roasted banana ice cream. The ice cream recipe came from Lebovitz, again. That book is going straight onto my Christmas list.

Roasting the bananas in brown sugar and butter deepened the flavor and also added a taste that was close to caramel. I did make a slight mistake, or rather I did something that just annoyed me. I roasted double-batch worth of bananas in two 9x9 pans. I took them out of the oven and then got distracted. The bananas and the liquid at the bottom of the pans cooled off and hardened. So, it was back into the still-warm oven for a few minutes to loosen things up. Other than that gaff, it was another very easy recipe.

The combination of peanut butter and bananas was very pleasing. Putting mini-chocolate chips around the edge of the sandwich was tasty finishing touch.

Chocolate PB, again

I made the chocolate peanut butter from Lebovitz again. This time, I added chopped-up Reese's PB cups. Splendid. The candy pushes the ice cream over the top. I continue to marvel at how the texture really is quite smooth for an eggless ice cream. The only thing I don't like about the recipe is that the size of the batch it makes is on the small side. The only answer, of course, is to double it in the future.

Peach Blueberry

I picked a lot of peaches and blueberries last weekend, so I had a lot of fruit that needed something done with it. I also had a picnic this past weekend and I needed to bring something. I decided I would make a double batch of peach blueberry ice cream. I based the recipe on David Lebovitz's recipe for peach ice cream.

First, the cook the fruit down in water for about 10 minutes. Then, you puree the fruit and the dairy in the food processor. Done. The only minor hitch was that double batch didn't fit into the food processor all at once.

The color was a really nice light purple. The taste was a nice balance between the two fruits. The texture was very smooth and light. A perfect summer ice cream.

Chocolate Peanut Butter

I reserved a copy of David Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop at the library a while ago. I just picked it up the other day. I need to buy it. The breadth of recipes is fantastic. The recipes themselves seem well-designed, too.

The book actually has a recipe for chocolate peanut butter ice cream. This is something that I've been fooling around with for some time. The book's recipe is simplicity defined. Pour a pint of half-and-half into a pot, add some sugar and cocoa powder. Heat and stir. Remove from heat. Add peanut butter. Chill. Pour into machine.

The texture is smooth and coats your mouth in a pleasant way with the two flavors. The overall flavor does lean just a little towards the PB side but that's good. If I want to change it in the future, I'd probably add just a little more cocoa powder.