Vanilla Bean Ice Cream with Shards of Chocolate
This recipe for Stracciatella, one of our most favourite ice cream flavours, takes no short cuts and is easily the best we’ve made to date. It is a cooked down custard loosely based on Roger Jorgensen’s wonderful recipe for Absinthe Ice Cream, which is utterly divine.
I made a vanilla bean custard and in the last minute of churning added a stream of decadent melted dark chocolate. It’s advisable to use a high quality dark chocolate, even up to 85 % cacao, but much will depend on your taste.
So, they say our summer is well on it’s way out. But days are still warm here and this stracciatella ice cream can also be served with pancakes and waffles if it’s a little chilly where you are.
Ingredients
makes under 1 l
250 ml full cream milk
500ml single cream
1/4 t sea salt
1 t corn flour
1 vanilla pod, slit in half
3/4 cup condensed milk
5 large free range egg yolks
85 g dark chocolate, chopped
Method
1. Scrape seeds out of pod. Heat milk, cream, salt, vanilla seeds and pod, corn flour and condensed milk in a saucepan, stir well and bring to the boil. Then lower heat.
2. In a separate bowl, stir together the egg yolks. Pour some of the warm milk into the yolks, whisking constantly as you pour. Keep milk on low heat and add yolks to milk, whisking.
3. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom with a wooden spoon, until custard is thick enough to coat the back of the wooden spoon. I cook it down for a further 4- 5 minutes.
4. Leave to cool completely. Strain through a sieve, removing vanilla pods. Pour into bucket of ice cream maker.
5. Freeze the custard in an ice cream maker for 40 – 60 minutes or use David Lebovitz’s method for making by hand.
6. In the last few minutes, melt chocolate in a heat resistant bowl suspended over a pot of simmering water. Once melted, leave to cool off the stove for a minute.
7. In the last 2 minutes of churning, pour as thin a stream of the chocolate into the ice cream . The chocolate will harden on contact and shatter. You can also break it up further with a fork before you allow to set overnight in freezer.
You may also like to try my White Chocolate & Raspberry, Speculoos, Lemon and Limoncello, Coconut Milk Ice Cream or Cucumber & Gin Sorbet.
I love the custard recipe and I will definitely give it a try soon. My mom went on a cruise earlier this year and popped in at a vanilla plantation in Madagasscar and brought me some extract and seeds. I cannot tell you how happy this made me 🙂
Hi Tami. I understand your joy – it’s like you have a piece of Madagascar in your kitchen and your Mom’s tales about the plantation visit become more ‘real’ every time you give the vanilla a sniff!
This recipe looks yummy, but is there really no sugar in it? All the other stracciatella recipes have at least a little… Thanks!
Hi Kimber, this recipe uses condensed milk which adds plenty sweetness. In South Africa we commonly associate it with the sweetened type. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensed_milk
Substitute with 1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar or adjust to taste
[…] at any time, so besides water and beer, I also ate a lot of ice cream, specially my favorite: the stracciatella. I mean, who does not like ice cream? In fact, in Rome, you can find the tastiest and creamiest: […]