Mocha Chip

This weeks ice cream is Mocha Chip. A few things went wrong with this one, but it still turned out pretty good. First the recipe called for a coffee concentrate that you make with a coffee toddy. I didn't have a coffee toddy so I just made a batch of REALLY strong espresso roast coffee. I added that to a basic sweet cream base. I wanted a little bit richer taste, so I melted some semisweet chocolate chips (about 1/2 cup) and added that tot he mix. Into the the machine it went.

Towards the end I thought I would add some chocolate chips. I wanted them to be smaller though, so I chopped them up in the blender. I made smaller chunks than what I really wanted. After the allotted 30 minutes in the machine what I really had was an ice cream soup. The ice cream is never "ready to eat" right out of the machine. It always needs a couple more hours in the freezer to firm up like I like it. But this was soupy. I consulted my Ben & Jerry's book and they said that whenever you add a liquid (like coffee) to the sweet cream base, it is going to affect your consistency and freezing time. I had a small cup (above) at lunch today and it is pretty good. It takes like a very rich chocolate with chips. With all the extra chocolate I added, I lost some of the coffee flavor. Amanda suggested that I leave out the extra chocolate next time. I think she's right.

Blueberries and Cream Ice Cream

Welcome to my first blog post exploring my exploits in homemade ice cream. I am hoping to make this a recurring part of the blog. First, a little background. I received my ice cream maker, the Cuisinart Automatic Frozen Yogurt/Ice Cream/Sorbet Maker for Christmas from my mom. I have made many different ice creams so far. My favorite is Chocolate & Peanut Butter, but I have enjoyed them all. Also for Christmas I got the book Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream and Dessert Book from Brad and Sarah. This was an essential piece in the great ice cream puzzle. The ice cream maker came with a small recipe book, but it left out what I found to be an essential ingredient: eggs. Ben & Jerry's recommends a least one or two eggs in each batch. The eggs seemed to really affect the consistency of the final product. I hope you enjoy this ongoing subject.

This past week we got a huge box of blueberries from Costco. I thought ice cream would be a good way to use some. I used approximately two cups of blue berries in my blueberries and cream ice cream. In my Cuisinart recipe book there is a recipe for strawberry ice cream that say to combine 1/3 cup of sugar, some lemon juice and berries and let stand for two hours. I only let the berries and sugar mixture stand for a little more than a half hour. This gave me more of a blue berries and cream taste than a blue berry flavored ice cream. It was very good though and I am finishing of the remainder of it this week.

Last night I made some "mocha chip" ice cream that I will write about next.