Homemade chocolate ice-cream thats Better than Ben & Jerry's
In terms of commercially available ice cream, Ben & Jerry’s has to be towards the top of the picking for me. There are some classier ice creams, like Hagen Daz, but in terms of pure decadence (and the the most non-ice cream ingredients added possible) you can’t really compete with Ben & Jerry’s.
Admittedly, in terms of just ice cream quality, B&J isn’t up to that much, compared to either proper Italian style ice cream or even other more luxury ice cream brands, but sometimes you just want your ice cream packed with chocolate, fudge, biscuits, marshmallow and anything else they decide to add to maximise the possible sugar in-take.
This great thing about this recipe is that we can improve the quality of all components and choose the bits we want.
If you don’t want to do this sous vide, then you can cook the base ice cream custard as you would normally, in a pan on the hob heating to your usual temperatures - the recipe doesn’t need much adjusting.
Sous vide cookie dough
I always use sous vide to make my ice cream custard, mostly for the set-and-forget convenience of putting it together (but there are other benefits I talk about here). One other advantage of using sous vide for making the ice cream custard here is that we can also make perfect cookie dough to add in.
My cookies use eggs, so to be safe we can pasteurise the eggs in the sous vide bath at the same time as the ice cream (we are pasteurising the eggs in the ice cream, 72 degrees is enough to do that), as well as making the eggs safer, it also makes for a slightly firmer, chewier dough - raw cookie dough won’t have much bite to it. Of course, at the lower temperature and 100% humidity of the sous vide approach it won’t go crunchy or hard, but will be an ideal result for adding to ice cream.
Added extras
It really is up to you what you add to the ice cream. The base chocolate ice cream is delicious and good enough to make and serve on its own (which I have done several times), but if you want your own B&Js experience then its all about the additions. I throw in a couple of chopped up balls of cookie dough, choc chips and marshmallows. Mixing in a couple spoons of Nutella or Biscoff spread right at the last minute will also give you a nice swirl of intense flavour running through the ice cream.
All thats left to do then is come up with a clever name for it!
- 1 tub of ice cream
- 5 minutes
- 60 minutes sous vide, overnight chilling and about 20 minutes in the ice cream maker
Ingredients
- 600 ml double cream
- 150ml whole/full-fat milk
- 135 grams caster sugar
- Pinch of salt (roughly 1/8 teaspoon)
- 4 egg yolks
- 25 grams cocoa powder
- 200g dark chocolate, chopped (or just use choc chips)
- Optional - 100 grams milk choc chips
- Optional - 2-3 balls of cookie dough
- Optional - 1 handful of small marshmallows, or 4-5 larger ones chopped up
Directions
- Mix the milk, egg yolks, sugar, cocoa powder and salt until combined
- Add the cream and dark chocolate and gently mix (don't whisk the cream)
- Add to a vacuum seal bag (or ziploc and submerge to remove air from the bag)
- Set up the sous vide bath to cook at 72 degrees, add the bagged ice cream mixture and cook for 60 minutes
- If you are using the cookie dough, add those balls to a separate ziploc bag and submerge in the water bath and cook for 60 minutes as well
- A few times during the cooking, remove the bag and shake to re-distribute the mixture
- After cooking, remove the ice cream bag and put into an ice bath to cool, then transfer to the fridge, do the same with the cookie dough if using
- Leave to chill over night
- The next day, run the cooled ice cream mixture through a sieve and then add to your ice cream machine and start churning, churn for 20 - 25 minutes (or as per your machines instructions)
- Optional - when churning is basically done, add the extra additions you are using - if you are using cookie dough balls, chop them into smaller pieces (as large as you like your cookie dough, I'd normally go for slightly larger than a chocolate chip)
- Either serve there and then whilst still soft, or freeze until ready to eat.
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