Chocolate Brownie Ice Cream

From the moment I laid eyes on Annie's recipe for Milk Chocolate Ice Cream with Brownie Bits, I was in love. I starred the recipe and added to the ingredients to my Peapod order. (Do you do Peapod? If not, you should. Grocery delivery is freaken fantastic.)

When it came time to make it however, I still had some brownies leftover from a box (Hey - don't judge. The box cost $1. You'd buy it too!) and couldn't really justify making even more. I thought about just throwing the box brownies into the recipe from Annie, but decided against it. I had visions of writing, "The ice cream was good, but the brownies were just ehh." I decided to save her complete version for next time.


I then remembered that Erin posted a Chocolate Ice Cream recipe on her blog, Dinner and Dessert (which she got from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop). I didn't star it initially because, well, in case you hadn't noticed, I like chunks of stuff in my ice cream, and plain ice cream has no chunks. But, in a rare lightbulb moment, I decided that I could throw my brownie chunks into Erin's recipe and I'd be very happy.

And "happy" does not begin to describe yours truly when eating this ice cream. Wowzers.


Here is Erin's recipe. I just also crumbled up the brownies and froze them for about a half hour; I added them to the machine for the last 2 minutes of churning.

Ingredients

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 3 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder (I used dark)
  
• 5 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 1 cup whole milk
• ¾ cup sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 5 large egg yolks
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Warm 1 cup of the cream with the cocoa powder in a medium saucepan, whisking to thoroughly blend the cocoa. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer at a very low boil for 30 seconds, whisking constantly. Remove from the heat and add the chopped chocolate, stirring until smooth. Then stir in the remaining 1 cup cream. Pour the mixture into a large bowl, scraping the saucepan as thoroughly as possible, and set a mesh strainer on top of the bowl.

Warm the milk, sugar, and salt in the same saucepan. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm milk unto the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.

Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the chocolate mixture until smooth, then stir in the vanilla. Stir until cool over an ice bath.

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions (If the cold mixture is too thick to pour into your machine, whisk it vigorously to thin out).

Makes about 1 quart