Dark Chocolate Fudge Ice Cream

Chewy ice creams. Some people might say - no such thing . I would reply - oh, but there is.

Many years ago when I was travelling through Turkey, I stopped in a town and went into what looked like an old fashioned ice cream parlour. Little did I realise what I treat I was in for. I sat watching while a hulking great man stood on a stool chipping ice cream out of metal drum at his feet with a long handled chisel. It was put into cones and served to small children. I myself was served a rectangular slab on a plate with a knife and fork.

This ice cream was of course, dondurma made with salep, which Wikepedia informs me is flour made from dried orchid tubers. It gives the ice cream a taffy like texture. I really needed that knife and fork. From memory the flavour was kind of vanillay noughaty sort of. Anyway, it was absolutely delicious. You can read more about it here.

The reason I relate this story is because I am always reminded of it, whenever I make this.

In this case, a dense sticky texture is produced by golden syrup. Don't worry it's not as extreme as the dondurma, you won't need a knife and fork to eat it.

Regardless of the texture, the flavour is more than enough for a recommendation. It is so, so good - creamy and deeply chocolately. It's very rich so a little goes a long way.

The process is a bit longer than for most ice cream recipes, but it is easy enough. The only frustation I have is that it takes an age for the sugar to melt completely. You just have to stick with it.

This is an Amercian recipe and there are numerous copies on the net. One can be found here. These recipes use corn syrup. I do not know if the use of corn syrup will produce the same texture. Being in Australia I also don't use half and half. This is how I make it.

Dark Fudge Ice Cream

In a large, heavy saucepan melt 250gm of dark chocolate with 2 tbspn of butter over a low heat. Stir in 2 cups of sugar, 1/3 cup of golden syrup and 2/3 cup of lite cream. Stir over a medium-low heat until the mix comes to boil. The sugar should be completely melted. Simmer for 4 minutes without stirring. Remove from the heat and set aside.

In a bowl, whisk 4 eggs. Slowly whisk in 1/2 cup of the hot chocolate mix. Stir in the remaining chocolate mix. Return to a medium heat and continue stirring until slightly thickened. Remove from heat and cool to lukewarm.

Stir in 2 tspn of vanilla extract, 2 cups of whipping cream and a further 1 1/3 cups of lite cream.

Pour into a container and freeze. I find that there is no need to use an ice cream maker. The mixture will remain completely smooth when frozen.


N.B. It may or may not be some time until my next post. I am the proud owner of a new laptop, which is currently somewhere between here and Singapore. Once I have it in my hot little hands I will be signing up with a new internet provider. Given my luddite tendencies, this is nothing less than a veritable technological mountain I have to climb. Hope to see you on the other side in a shiny new broadband world.