Make This Choc Malt Cacao Chip Ice Cream !

Creamy malt ice cream, ever so slightly salted, and dotted with crunchy chunks of cacao nibs. This Choc Malt Cacao Chip Ice Cream is grown up chocolate chip. The malt is toasty,  with an almost savoury warmth, and the cacao nibs have a bitter, roasted crunch. The whole thing works together in a sophisticated, silken scoop that you’ll fall straight in love with. 

 

Choc Malt Cacao Chip Ice Cream! // The Sugar Hit

 

I’ve been out for a little while! Only about a week, but it feels like forever. Did you miss me? I’ve been out sick, really not feeling well, and I just had to take a few days off. If you’re a writer then I bet you know exactly where I’m coming from. I can cook, style, shoot, even wash dishes (though I definitely weaselled out of it) when I’m sick, but writing is beyond me. The mental energy of expressing myself on the page is just too much, especially when I feel like crap. All I want to do when I’m sick is sit around watching PBS cartoons non-stop (shout out to all my Arthur fans).

 

But now I’m back and like any cool person returning after an unexplained absence, I brought ice cream! Choc Malt Cacao Chip Ice Cream. As always, Jeni Britton Bauer was an indispensable part of the ice cream making experience. Her no-egg method has actually changed my ice cream tastes for good. Rich, custard-based ice creams are just too much – too fatty, too heavy. If you want to serve your ice cream with a sauce, or on top of a slice of pie, the no-egg, Philadelphia style (through the Britton-Bauer lens) is unsurpassed.

 

Choc Malt Cacao Chip Ice Cream! // The Sugar Hit

 

Eating this enterprising woman’s ice cream should permanently shut the mouth of anyone claiming women don’t have an aptitude for science – her superior understanding of the chemical reactions involved in the process is what makes it so.damn.good. Lucky for us, we get to read about the findings in her books, and then go and be creative as hell, standing on the shoulders of her scientific nous (anyone else reminded of this scene from Jurassic Park).

 

This particular flavour combo will blow your mind. Like I mentioned at the start, its chocolate chip for grown ups. I replaced the vanilla (which I prefer purely on its own or with fruit) with toasty, creamy, almost-savoury malt. And I ditched those hard little chunks of chocolate for crunchy, crumbly cacao nibs. The sweet-saltiness of the ice cream works so well with those roasted, rich, cacao chunks striated through the whorls of ice cream, and the texture is gorgeous. This week, celebrate whatever you’ve got to celebrate with a melting scoop of this ice cream in a cone. For me; it’s that I’m back online!

 

xx Sarah.

 

Choc Malt Cacao Chip Ice Cream! // The Sugar Hit

 

Choc Malt Cacao Chip Ice Cream! // The Sugar Hit

 

Make This Choc Malt Cacao Chip Ice Cream !
 
Author:
Serves: ~1 Litre/4 cups
Ingredients
  • 2 cups (500ml) milk
  • 1 tbsp arrowroot or tapioca starch
  • 3 tbsp cream cheese, at room temperature
  • ¼ tsp flaky sea salt
  • 1 + ¼ cups (310ml) cream (heavy cream if you're in the US, double cream if you're in the UK)
  • ½ cup + 1 tbsp (115g) caster sugar
  • 2 tbsp glucose syrup (or corn syrup)
  • ½ cup chocolate malt powder (such as ovaltine)
  • ¼ cup cacao nibs
Instructions
  1. Place 2 tbsp of the milk into a small bowl, add the arrowroot powder and stir to combine. Set aside.
  2. Place the cream cheese into a large mixing bowl (something that will hold all the ingredients later) and add the salt. Whisk until smooth. Set aside.
  3. Place the remaining milk, the cream, sugar and glucose syrup into a large saucepan (it should fill the pan no more than a third), and place over a medium heat. Bring the mixture up to the boil, and then set a timer and boil for 4 minutes. Be careful, as this can boil over easily, and cleaning up spilled milk sucks - it's nothing to cry over, but it sucks.
  4. Once the milk has had it's 4 minutes, remove from the heat, and whisk in the arrowroot-milk mixture. Place back over the heat and cook for about a minute, until thickened.
  5. Remove some of this mixture back to the arrowroot bowl, and whisk in the ovaltine (this prevents lumps, then stir back into the main mix.
  6. Now, little by little, whisk the ovaltine mix into the cream cheese (you don't want lumps of cream cheese). Leave this mixture to cool completely (I do this in the fridge overnight, or you could whisk it over an ice bath).
  7. Then churn in your machine, as per the manufacturer's instructions. Once the ice cream is churned, quickly fold through the cacao nibs (don't be tempted to add too many - less is more), then set in the freezer for at least 4 hours. Then eat it, dude.
Notes
Recipe adapted from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home, Artisan, 2011
 

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