Chocolate Ice Cream

The writer Anne Fadiman has this to say of ice cream:

I go through the motions of scooping a modest hemisphere of ice cream into a small bowl, but we (she and her husband) both know that during the course of the evening I will simply shuttle to and from the freezer until the entirety of the pint has been transferred from carton to bowl to me.

From the essay titled, naturally, “Ice Cream.”

I share Ms. Fadiman’s feelings about ice cream, but rarely buy or make it. Why? Well, the ice cream made for this post–16 ounces–lasted exactly two days. My husband consumed one 4-ounce serving. The remaining 12 ounces was inhaled by yours truly.

For many years I fed my ice cream habit with commercial ice creams. By “commercial”  think superpremium ice creams, the sort churned in small batches by equally small companies. These companies proudly touted their use of organic dairy products containing high levels butterfat.

Once home, I dispensed with niceties like tempering the ice cream before eating it or fussing about with bowls. I wanted immediate access to the good stuff. Further, why create unnecessary washing up?

Along these lines, I confess to never liking ice cream cones. They taste like cardboard. Why waste valuable stomach space, to say nothing of calories?

And there’s the rub. Calories. All that superpremium dairy is loaded with the nasty little things.

Hence my avoiding the stuff. I mean, it wasn’t like I could run around the block or hop on an exercise bike. Better simply to avoid ice cream altogether.

Then it occurred to me that most of my evening meals ended with cheese. Not wheels of the stuff, but cheese nonetheless.

Not cheese.

This, of course, was illogical thinking. Even a woman who nearly flunked college logic could understand that.

So I pulled  Elizabeth David’s Christmas off the shelf, turning to her Chocolate Ice Cream recipe. Written before the advent of home ice cream makers, the recipe produces delicous ice cream without much work. Of course. It’s Elizabeth David.

Most ice cream recipes have you prepare a custard by mixing the milk, sugar, and flavoring together, then slowly pouring this into the egg yolks. David has you blend the ingredients in a blender, save the chocolate. You then make a custard.  Or you can skip the blender and just dump your ingredients into a pan. Once you have “a thin custard,”  you pour it over the chocolate, which you’ve perhaps broken up in advance. Stir everything until melted. You can add two tablespoons of “coffee or rum or whisky or plain water.”

Thin custard, above. Chocolate, below, melted in the microwave.

This mixture is chilled in the refrigerator, poured into a mold, or, as I used to make it, plastic ice cube trays. After chilling in the refrigerator, the cream is moved into the freezer. The next day, you have ice cream.

Just before going into the ice cream maker. Not beautiful, but very good. So good that you will never want to eat commercial ice cream again.