Life by Chocolate

Chocolate, white, milk, dark, in all its forms forms life. Chocolate truffles, caramels, and other confections are at the core of enjoyment. This is life by chocolate because death by chocolate is the wrong attitude.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Post for Maggie at Dog Hill

The funny thing Maggie is that I use many of my ice cream flavors in my confections. Orange cinnamon ice cream with 25 year old balsamic vinegar became a white chocolate slabbed ganache, dipped in dark chocolate with a orange peel confit. My banana saffron ice cream became a caramel. My orange cinnamon ice cream became a caramel. Ditto with my bacon, banana and maple ice cream. And the list goes on. You'll see these confections and the truffles during the holidays.

Then when I was first doing the chocolates, I would take all my broken, poorly tempered, whatever problem chocolates and confections and I'd save them and add them to my vanilla base.

My vanilla base is:

1 qt 1/2 and 1/2
3/4 qt heavy cream
1 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean (Madagascar, Mexican or Tahitian, depending on what you are doing. I do a Tahitian vanilla that is fantastic.
Optional Flavoring (Ex, cinnamon sticks.)
9 egg yolks

Combine vanilla bean, Flavor, cream, 1/2 and 1/2 and sugar, bring to a simmer. Put aside and let cool. Temper the egg yolks and the reheat the cream mixture while pouring the tempered yolks into the mixture in a thin stream. Very thin. Constantly stir. Cook on low to medium heat till you get to 180F. Use a candy/oil thermometer.

Strain into a metal measuring cup or two and put into an ice bath to cool. So, strain into container and insert into an ice bath. DO NOT POUR THE ICE CREAM INTO THE WATER, ICE AND SALT. Put the whole container into the bath, please. (Sorry if you understood that already but I felt my wording was ambiguous.)

If you do the nougat ice cream, put the nougat into the metal container and strain base into the container and put whole container into water bath. Do not add optional flavor.

Get your ice cream maker going and pour the cooling mixture in. You know your ice cream machine so, you do what you need to do to get it to work. I have a Lello by Muso that is killer. If you have a home Cuisinart, which I used for years, you need to chill your ice cream before churning. With my Lello, I just turn it on in advance and voilà, ice cream.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Maggie said...

Thanks for the recipe! I'm actually looking into buying a better ice cream machine, though not quite as big and pricy as the Lello, when we move.

August 17, 2008 at 11:39 PM  
Blogger Mark by Chocolate said...

The Lello is worth the money. Funny, I was recommending it to my friend Tom and he just laughed. He wants to start making gelato for his cafe and he estimates that with a real, that means Italian, blast freezer, 25-50 qt machine, trip to Italy for lessons, that it will cost him 100-200K to start it up.

So, the measly $1,200 is, well, measly. BTW, I didn't see your comment until recently. I was in VT. Glad you liked the post.

Don't bother with the Cuisinart. I used it for a couple of years. Eventually, you will outgrow it.

August 26, 2008 at 5:10 PM  

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