Black Onyx Chocolate

When we were purchasing the lavender buds we needed for our last ice cream, we came across a black onyx cocoa powder that looked good. After trying it in whipped cream (it tastes like Oreos!), we thought it would be good to try in our chocolate ice cream.

Rating: 3 scoops

The black onyx cocoa power provided a different flavor profile than what this ice cream normally tastes like (the Oreo flavor came through!). It also imparted a richer, dark color which was noticeable as the base cooked and was churned.

However, this scoop of ice cream was very soft and started melting instantly. This is noticeable in the picture above. I have two hypotheses for this but are not sure which one contributes more:

1. According to the package, black onyx cocoa powder has lower fat than traditional cocoa power. Less fat means there are less solids globules in the ice cream to help hold air and freeze to help stiffen the structure, which will make it softer.
2. The dark chocolate was changed for this batch of ice cream. Our traditional 85% HEB dark chocolate was not in stock when we purchased ingredients to make this ice cream, so we had to swap it out for 85% Lindt dark. The Lindt chocolate has more sugar compared to an equal amount of HEB chocolate, so the extra sugar makes for a softer ice cream.

This ice cream is fickle to start with because of all the sugar- and fat-containing components. It has taken many batches of experimentation to determine the right mix of chocolates to use to create the right texture for this ice cream. Mixing up two ingredients was a lot - so we'll need to try again with our standard dark and milk chocolates to see how the black onyx turns out!