Chocolate Overload

We've been on a chocolate ice cream kick lately. The combination of bittersweet and milk chocolate just makes such a good combination that we would keep a batch in the freezer at all times if possible! Eventually we eat it up and then decide it is time for a different flavor, or in this case, a different set of mix ins that plays to our love of chocolate: brownies and fudge ripple.

Rating: 5 scoops

The base of this ice cream still remains one of our all-time favorites that we make. I've lost track of how many times we've made it but over time we've figured out the right combination of chocolates and sugar to use to make sure it is not too soft when eating. A lower cacao percentage in the chocolate means that there is more sugar, which is then available to bind to water moving throughout the ice cream base and prevent it from freezing. With less free water that is frozen in the ice cream, the ice cream is softer but it comes at the expense of melting faster. Chocolate ice cream is a particular challenge as even chocolate that should be similar have different sugar ratios, so it's critical to use the same types of chocolate each time for repeatable results.

With all that science in mind, the chocolate was melted, dairy and sugars heated up, mixed together, cooled, cured, and then churned. Delicious!

To make this ice cream better, we wanted to mix a few things in it. Brownies just sounded good, so we heated up the oven and got to baking. It started with mixing some chocolate (bittersweet in this case), butter, and cocoa powder. From there, the eggs and sugar was whipped together to form an airy mixture. The melted chocolate was then added, followed by flour and baking powder. After 20 minutes in the oven, we had a pan of brownies ready to be mixed into some ice cream!

The final component of the ice cream was the fudge ripple. This is one that we've made before and is straightforward to make by heating up some cream and milk and then adding some cocoa and sugar. This recipe has a little more sugar compared to hot fudge sauce because it needs to be soft when frozen. If you try to freeze hot fudge sauce, you'd end up with a solid block of chocolate.

From there, everything was mixed together!

Originally, we intended to stop here but we found ourselves with some extra time on our hands. Because we had a few chocolate components already, it was decided that a few more wouldn't hurt when it came to serving! This is how we ended up making chocolate profiteroles, chocolate whipped cream, and dark chocolate fudge sauce to keep going with the chocolate overload theme.

Profiteroles are one thing that I have not yet mastered yet. I watched several videos and looked at different recipes to try to make sure they would turn out. In the end, it comes down to if the flour is cooked long enough. I was using temperature as my guide but it was taking way longer to cook compared to most of the recipes I found. The profiteroles looked ok when they went into the oven but they certainly did not rise as much as they should have, resulting in squat profiteroles. Oh well, they were still pretty good.

In the end, this ice cream was delicious! The chocolate ice cream + brownies + fudge ripple was a delicious combination. With all this chocolate, it was hard to taste the chocolate profiterole but a different ice cream flavor might have helped. Next time!