Creamy Dark Chocolate Sorbet

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Steph of A Whisk and A Spoon. She chose Creamy Dark Chocolate Sorbet. Now, I’m not that big of fan of making ice cream, mainly because I don’t have an ice cream maker. Plus, I knew I was going to be out of town for the weekend and I wasn’t sure that I’d really have the time to make this. But I looked at the recipe and it looked so simple and I did have the ingredients on hand, so I decided to give it a shot. You can get the complete recipe for this sorbet on Steph’s blog.

The dictionary defines sorbet as a “usually a fruit-flavored ice.” This isn’t fruit-flavor, but flavored instead with bittersweet chocolate. Instead of making an egg custard, you just combine water, sugar, milk and chocolate. I wanted to spice it up a bit so I also added hazelnut extract to the mixture. Other flavors would be good, too, but I am partial to the chocolate hazelnut combination (so much so that it has its own tag in my blog!)

This was super simple to make, but as I have to use David Lebovitz’s freeze and stir method, this takes hours to get to ice cream-like consistency. After 4 hours of freezing and stirring, I decided to call it “good enough” and let it freeze before serving it the next day. It still was somewhat soft and very scoop-able after freezing overnight. The flavor of this is unexpectedly good. My husband said “fudgesicle” which is fairly close. The texture is really nice and the chocolate shines through. You can just pick up the faintest hint of hazelnut. For something that I wasn’t going to make, this recipe turned out to be a delightful surprise.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 431

Chocolate Ganache Ice Cream

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was picked by Katrina of Baking and Boys. She decided to choose Chocolate Ganache Ice Cream, which is one of the simplest recipes, ingredient wise, in the book. To get the complete recipe, visit Katrina’s blog. It’s just chocolate ganache (chocolate and heavy cream) and then ice cream/custard base mixed together. Yummy!

I had some left over ganache in the refrigerator that I had thought about using, but it was beyond its natural life so I decided to start from scratch. I only have 3 ounces of chocolate so I decided to halve the recipe. I used 72% bittersweet chocolate and hoped that would give enough flavor without being too dark and bitter. My ganache didn’t get at smooth as usual, but I hoped that wouldn’t be a problem. I’ve made custard a zillion times since joining Tuesdays with Dorie, but this time it didn’t turn out too well. It was kind of grainy (from the start) and I couldn’t ever get an accurate temperature reading, so I think I may have overcooked the custard. I mixed it all together and while it was still a little grainy, it looked pretty good.

I had to go to work so I stuck it into the refrigerator to cool and then planned to freeze it later. Making ice cream is always quite a task because I don’t have an ice cream maker. I use David Lebovitz’s method of freeze-stir-freeze to make ice cream. This usually takes about 4 hours. When I took the mixture out of the refrigerator, it was already very firm. I froze it for 45 minutes to start the freezing process and by the end of the first freezing, it was pretty solid. I stirred it as well as I could, froze it another 30 minutes and called it good. I served it right away and it was quite yummy! It wasn’t perfectly frozen but the texture was really nice. This ice cream is really rich and you can’t eat too much, but I really liked it. I think it would be good with some add-ins like nuts and marshmallows, but that wouldn’t have worked with my version. Don’t forget to check out how all of the other Tuesdays with Dorie bakers did with this week’s recipe.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 430

Burnt Sugar Ice Cream

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Becky of Project Domestication. She chose Burnt Sugar Ice Cream and you can get the entire recipe on her blog.

Many of the Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers were so excited to make this. I don’t have an ice cream maker so my first thought was not of excitement. I have made ice cream before, but without an ice cream maker, it takes a really long time. The results are pretty good, but I’m never sure that it’s worth the effort. So grumble, grumble, grumble, I had thought about not making this week’s recipe. I read the Q and A on the Tuesdays with Dorie site and everyone was raving about how good this recipe was! Ok, fine, I’ll give it a try.

Since joining Tuesdays with Dorie, I’ve mastered a couple of things that I’d never really tried before. I can make caramel with no problem. I can make custard blindfolded. This recipe combines the two: first you make caramel, and then you make custard in the same pan. My caramel seized completely when I added the milk/cream, but I guess it was supposed to do that. It did eventually melt all back together and after that it was easy. In the meantime my stove got really messy and I should really clean that up.

I refrigerated the custard overnight and then froze it the next day. I used the ice cream making technique from David Lebovitz’s website, which I have used before. It makes good ice cream, but it takes 4 hours. This time I made the ice cream in a bowl, rather than a square dish with corners. This made the whole stirring/whipping process a lot easier. At least the final product is really tasty! It tastes like ice cream with caramel sauce mixed in. I love caramel so this was the right thing for me. I served this with the coconut steamed pudding that my husband had made. Coconut and caramel was a winning combination and I’m really glad that I made this.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 432

Honey Peach Ice Cream

Tommi of Brown Interior selected Honey-Peach Ice Cream for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. Check out her blog for the complete recipe. I didn’t know what to expect this week with a recipe for ice cream. I consider myself a baker and ice cream falls outside of that realm. I like eating ice cream, but making it? I don’t know.

I was actually hoping that we would get a “rewind” this week. When the weekly recipe requires special equipment (like an ice cream maker), we can have the option of making a previously-selected recipe instead. There were a couple of recipes that were selected before I joined Tuesdays with Dorie that I really want to try! I was hoping for a chance to try one of those recipes, but since there are instructions on the Internet on how to make ice cream without an ice cream maker, no rewind this time. I haven’t missed a week since I joined Tuesdays with Dorie, and I didn’t want that to change.

I used the instructions on how to make ice cream from Dave Lebovitz’s website. It didn’t look too hard, but looked like it would take a long time. It did take a long time. I chilled the ice cream mixture in the refrigerator for about 3 hours and then it took about 4 hours for it to become ice cream. 4 hours, stirring every 30 minutes was a bit tedious. And my kitchen was a complete mess when I was done making the ice cream!

The ice cream mixture came together easily. The recipe said to dice the peaches and then bring them to a boil with the honey, and cook them until soft. I was actually worried about getting ripe peaches, which seems to generally be impossible in Western Washington. My husband picked up some very ripe peaches at the store, so I didn’t even cook them. They were so soft already that the cooking process seemed completely unnecessary. I also only used 3 peaches, which I pureed. I didn’t want chunks of peaches in my ice cream.

I was pleasantly surprised by the ice cream. The texture is pretty good, not icy at all. The flavor…well, I’m not sure. I do like ripe peaches, but I don’t like peach yogurt so I can’t say that peaches are a favorite. I used cinnamon-infused honey in the ice cream, and I’m not sure that was the best choice. It tasted fabulous on its own, but in the ice cream it was really overpowering. I tasted the ice cream the day after I made it and the cinnamon honey gave the ice cream a weird, kind of bitter aftertaste. When I was getting ready to photograph the ice cream 2 days after I made it, the cinnamon flavor had mellowed a lot and it tasted pretty good. Not bad for my first try at ice cream. I can’t say that it’s something that I plan on making again, but it was a good experience.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, on page 437.