Shards of salted chocolate ice cream

Vanilla ice cream with lightly salted dark chocolate

Thanks to this glorious weather we are enjoying, even in Scotland, lots of ice cream is needed to keep us cool.  With Lily only recently kidded, I have  barely a litre of milk per day as it has to be shared with her babies until they are weaned.  It’s not worth separating as I would only get about 50ml of cream so I am using whole milk and making small quantities at a time.  Luckily we still have plenty of eggs, although the ducks have passed their laying peak, so on Friday I made a basic vanilla ice cream and then in honour of this month’s blog challenge on Kavey Eats, pepped it up with some lightly salted dark chocolate.

Ice cream churning

• Difficulty: medium
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Ingredients

400ml milk

2 tbls dried milk powder

75g caster sugar

3 large egg yolks

1 tsp vanilla paste

pinch salt

50g plain chocolate

1/4 tsp coarse sea salt ground slightly

Instructions

1. Put the milk, dried milk powder and salt into a pan and bring just up to boiling point.
2. In a bowl beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla paste until pale and fluffy.
3. Allow the milk to cool slightly and then with the mixer running slowly, pour the hot milk onto the egg mixture and stir until thoroughly blended. Try not to whisk too vigorously as this makes in frothy.
4. Leave to cool.
5. Pour into the ice cream maker and start churning.
6. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water, stir in the ground sea salt.
7. Leave to cool slightly.
8. When the ice cream is beginning to freeze pour in the cooled chocolate with the paddle running.  As it hits the cold ice cream it should harden and break up into pieces.

With a nice tub of ice cream crying out to be eaten I decided to make us some cones so that we could enjoy it properly.

Home made cones

Ice cream cones

• Difficulty: medium
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Ingredients

50g plain flour

100g caster sugar

2 large eggs

50g butter, melted

2-3 tbls milk

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Pinch salt

Vegetable oil or melted butter

Instructions

1. Whisk the eggs and sugar together, then add the slightly cooled melted butter and stir.  Add the rest of the ingredients apart from the vegetable oil and beat until you have a smooth batter.  Add more milk if it’s a bit on the thick side.
2. Heat a pan over a medium heat until very hot.  Remove from the heat and brush with vegetable oil or butter.
3. Pour 60ml (4 tbls) of the batter into the pan and swirl it around until it forms a thin circle in the base.
4. Return to the heat and cook for approx 5 minutes or until the underside is brown then lift the pancake with a pallet knife and flip over.
5. When golden brown on both sides, remove from the pan and whilst the pancake is still hot (gloves are very useful at this point) wrap around into a cone shape and squeeze the bottom to seal completely.
6. Leave to cool on a rack while you cook the next one.
7. When all the cones are completely cold, fill with the ice cream of your choice and enjoy.
8. Alternatively drape the hot pancakes over an upended bowl and gently mould around it.  Leave to cool, remove from the bowl and you have a handy edible vessel in which to serve your ice cream.

Handy edible bowls for ice cream