Cherry Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
I’ve never considered myself a huge fan of cherries, but when my roommate brought home a bag of them from Whole Foods, I forgot that fact about myself and took her up on the offer to try some.
Maybe it was just because I was super hungry, but right then and there, I decided cherries weren’t as bad as I thought.
The cherries were sweet, juicy and had a slight hint of tartness that immediately made me think of how good they would taste in an ice cream paired with chocolate chips.
I love when chocolate is paired with fruits that have a bit of acidity to them, and I especially love this pairing in an ice cream.
CHERRY CHOCOLATE CHIP ICE CREAM RECIPE
Ingredients:
3 cups half & half
8 egg yolks
2 1/2 cups of sweet cherries
1 tsp of water
pinch of salt
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar – I used light brown.
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips – I used these.
Steps:
Mix half & half with egg yolks and place on stove over medium heat for about 5-8 minutes to create the base.
Stir frequently, wait for the base to thicken, and remove from heat. Pour the base into a container, and store in the freezer to further cool the base while performing the other steps.
Measure the cherries, then remove the stems.
Pit the cherries. The way I pitted my cherries was a bit more time consuming (because, clearly, I did it for the gram), but if you don’t care as much about how your cherries look, you can probably pit them faster using other techniques.
Create a cherry compote by combining the cherries, water, pinch of salt and sugars and placing on the stove over medium high heat. Bring the mixture to a boil, then switch to low heat and let simmer for 3 minutes.
While simmering, lightly crush the cherries to help release flavor. After the 3 minutes is up, remove from heat, and separate the cherries from the syrup part of the compote.
Mix the syrup into the base that was left in the freezer. Leave in freezer for another hour or leave in the refrigerator overnight.
Make sure base is cold before pouring the base into the ice cream maker, and set a timer for 25 minutes. This is important, as you DO NOT want to over-churn the base.
Put the cherries in a blender, and lightly pulse until you get little chunks. With my NutriBullet, I pressed down about 6-8 times to get the right consistency.
Slowly add the cherry chunks to the ice cream maker after about 20 minutes of churning.
After about 23 minutes of churning, add in the mini chocolate chips.
Once 25 minutes is up, remove mix from ice cream maker and place in freezer safe-container.
Freeze, then enjoy!