Chocolate with Peppermint Patties

For this week's ice cream, I knew that I wanted to do a chocolate. I've made several types of chocolate ice creams over the years but they have all been consistently soft and melted quickly. It was time to make another batch to see if the softness problem could be solved. To accentuate the chocolate in this ice cream, I decided to add some homemade peppermint patties.

Rating: 5 scoops

It's a keeper! And it may be one of my favorite ice creams to date. I set out to see if I can solve my softness problem and this ice cream accomplished that. No longer does the ice cream melt quickly into a soupy mess in the bowl. The peppermint patties were kind of fun to make and the little pockets of peppermint were a refreshing mix in. The chocolate flavor really came through, which may have been a side effect of me changing the chocolate from previous batches. Little scoops are the best way to enjoy this treat.

As for the softness problem: I changed two things in this ice cream - the chocolate bars and a different cream - so more experiments will be required to narrow down if one contributed more to the solution (not that this will be a problem!).

I hypothesized that my last batch of chocolate ice cream was soft due to an excess of sugar contributed by the chocolate. To test this out, I switched to 85% cacao for this batch. The higher the cacao percentage, the less room there is for fillers (mostly sugar). When I compared the sugar content of various cacao percentages, there was 15 g less sugar per serving of the 85% compared to the 70%!

For the cream, HEB had a sale on Shamrock Farms Heavy Whipping Cream (different from what I usually get) so I decided to purchase that without considering how it might affect the ice cream. Inflation on dairy products has been higher than a lot of other categories so I take my discounts when I get them. Looking at the label compared to the HEB brand I usually buy, it looks similar but with the addition of a small amount of sugar. It's possible this affected the final ice cream but I believe the lower sugar content from the chocolate contributed more.

With all that out of the way, this was a quick ice cream to put together: melt some chocolates, boil some dairy, mix the two together, and cool in preparation to churn!

I didn't realize peppermint patties were so easy to put together. They also don't need to look perfect like York Peppermint Patties since they would be chopped up to be mixed into the ice cream. However, I made the mistake of not letting the peppermint "filling" firm up in the fridge before dipping in the chocolate. The warm chocolate deformed the filling, but I quickly corrected after the first one by putting the other wedges in the fridge for a little bit and that helped. Of course, munching a few when you are churning the ice cream is always a nice chef's treat!