Easy chocolate ice cream

I have made a lot of ice cream and some recipes are quite sophisticated and take a lot of time. This is the exact opposite where both the list of ingredients and intricacies is minimal. For this recipe, it is possible to use an ice cream machine or to throw the finished batter directly into the freezer and the only difference is how much you whip the cream before mixing all the ingredients. If the ice cream is to be put in the freezer (without an ice cream machine), I whip the cream quite hard and fold the other ingredients over carefully, but if I use an ice cream machine, I leave the cream a little liquid.

I try to cool down the ingredients after the initial heating of the cocoa and the water, which I think helps a bit with the end result. I think it is important to use as good a cocoa as possible (I use Valrhona for most things I do) as it gives better taste, but it is slightly more expensive and of course not a requirement.

The biggest time saving with this recipe is that unlike regular ice cream, you do not have to heat egg yolks, milk and cream until it thickens. In this recipe, you do not have any egg at all, but the ice cream consists mostly of condensed milk and cream, which together give the consistency you are looking for. I mostly use ice cream machine when I make ice cream at home as this gives a better end result, but as I wrote before, it is also possible to make this recipe without an ice cream machine. If you just whip the cream hard and then carefully fold over the other ingredients, it will also be very good.

When it comes to serving suggestions for chocolate ice cream, there are a large number of creative variants on the Internet. Personally, I think that ice cream in general is perfect to enjoy as it is without too many accessories. Chocolate ice cream that you make yourself on a high quality cocoa is often so tasty that nothing more is needed, but it often happens that I sprinkle a little grated dark chocolate over and powder a little lightly with cocoa. If I would like to add another layer of chocolate, I usually make a quick chocolate sauce on equal parts cocoa, water and syrup, which I heat up quickly and possibly add a little more butter when I remove it from the heat. Yes, I like chocolate. :) Another favorite is to let the chocolate ice cream bathe in baileys liqueur - a little luxury that suits the weekend as a wonderfully decadent dessert.