Dulce de Leche and Chocolate

I was flipping through one of my cookbooks the other day looking for a recipe and came across the dulce de leche recipe. It has been a while since I've made that, so I decided to pair it with some chocolate chunks in a vanilla base.

Rating: 4 scoops

Each of the components of the ice cream were great, but I'm not sure the vanilla ice cream was the right base for this. Both the dulce de leche and chocolate chunks contributed a strong flavor to the final ice cream and it was washing out the vanilla. Perhaps a plain custard or cream cheese base would be a better fit. I will, however, keep eating it!

I started off with the dulce de leche, something I've made several times before. It's easy enough, as long as you get the water heated up to a steamy 185° to allow the milk to caramelize. The result is a sweet, mellow, and jammy mixture that is less bitter than caramel. I always hope for some extras after making ice cream so I can add it to other things - in this case, I used the limited amount that was left to drizzle on some waffles. Delicious!

For my chocolate chunks, I started with some Ghirardelli 86% Intense Dark. A few minutes later, the chocolate, coconut oil, and salt had melted in the double boiler and it filled up a 8" x 8" pan to be frozen. While the results are good, the addition of the coconut oil lowers the melting point of the chocolate such that it starts melting when you handle it (as is the case when you chop it and then pick it up to put in a container). There was also a 72% chocolate from Ghirardelli, which might be good to try although it would be a bit sweeter than this.

This vanilla custard was a standard recipe with infused vanilla bean. The vanilla bean was quite dry for it coming from a new container, so it cracked apart and was difficult to get the seeds out of the pod. It's possible more of the seeds were stuck in the pod and didn't fully infuse into the base, which contributed to a not-so-potently-flavored vanilla custard as I recall from past efforts.