Chocolate Ice Cream with Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch

There are two items in my house that are at war. One is my ice cream maker. The other is my scale. They just do not get along. My scale has been winning out for awhile but this week the ice cream maker got back in the fight in a big way. A big chocolatey, peanut buttery way.

I used a chocolate ice cream recipe from Jeni, of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams via David Lebovitz. But I wanted to do something different and that’s why I added the Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch at the very end. It was actually quite good at the beginning. But by the time the ice cream had hardened, I realized that the Cap’n just doesn’t hold up well to ice cream. Sadly, it got a little mushy. However, the chocolate ice cream was fantastic! Really rich and extremely chocolatey. I would recommend just making the chocolate ice cream and use the Cap’n Crunch as a topping if you so desire.

Ingredients:

1 cup whole milk
4 teaspoons corn starch
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup evaporated milk (unsweetened condensed milk)
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a very small bowl or prep dish, make a slurry with the corn starch and 3-4 tablespoons of the milk. Mix until it’s smooth. In a large saucepan, heat up the rest of the milk, cream, evaporated milk, sugar and corn syrup. I actually didn’t have evaporated milk, only sweetened condensed milk and the powers of the Internet told me that was not a suitable substitute. However, you can just use regular cream and that’s what I did.

When the milk mixture comes to a moderate boil, whisk in the cocoa powder very well and let it boil for about 4 minutes. You’ll know if the boil is too much if the milk starts to foam up and threaten to boil over. Just turn the heat down some if that happens. Try to break up any clumps of cocoa you see.

Next pour in your slurry. You may need to mix it again to loosen it up. Cook for about one minute while stirring constantly until it thickens slightly. This happened almost immediately for me. Take it off the heat and add your chocolate and salt and stir until everything is melted and smooth. Then add the vanilla.

For this next step it’s helpful to have an extra set of hands so get someone to help you if you can. Pour the mixture through a sieve into a Ziploc bag. Be careful because it’s very hot. Zip the bag closed and put it in a bowl filled with ice to cool down for about a half hour. You will want to check it and move the ice around as it melts to make sure the mixture is getting cool.

Once it’s cool, put the mixture into your ice cream maker and follow the instructions for freezing it. Once the mixture had the consistency of soft serve, I added the Cap’n Crunch. You can either leave the mixture in your canister and put it in the freezer to set up, or pour it into another container. I pour it into another container because I find that the ice cream maker canister freezes it so solid that it’s hard to ever get out. I found these great little pints on Amazon that work great. They make it easy to give away my ice cream, which makes my scale feel better about the whole thing. 


(click for printable recipe)