Rocky road ice cream

On its own I'm not a huge fan of chocolate (gasp, I know). A chocolate bar without almonds or orange flavor or hazelnuts in it? No thank you. Chocolate ice cream without chips or chunks or coffee or nuts or fruit in it? Meh, I'll pass.

But you put stuff in chocolate and all of a sudden its transformed. Like this chocolate ice cream from A Perfect Scoop. It's dense and deep and rich and chocolately. Soooooo goooooood. But I can imagine that on its own I wouldn't have been a huge fan. So originally I was planning on modifying the recipe and adding coffee to turn it into a mocha ice cream.

But then on the bottom of the recipe page it suggested using the chocolate ice cream as a base for rocky road. Luckily for me I always keep nuts in my freezer. And I just so happened to have a hand full of leftover homemade marshmallows (from my s'mores post). It was a sign from the heavens.

The soft and sweet marshamallows with the salty and crunchy almonds, all held together with an intensely dark chocolate- that's perfection in a bite right there!

Yours in loving the fact that she had leftover cream from a previous recipe as the perfect excuse to make ice cream in this 30 degree weather,
Jacqueline

Chocolate/ Rocky Road Ice Cream, from A Perfect Scoop
Makes ~1 quart

Ingredients
2 cups heavy cream
3 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder (Dutch-processed will make the color darker and flavor deeper, but I rarely have it on hand so I used my Ghiradelli cocoa powder. However, I really love the Hershey's Dark Cocoa, which is half Dutch-processed and half natural cocoa)

5 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate (I used 70% dark)
1 cup whole milk
¾ cup granulated sugar
Pinch of salt
5 large egg yolks
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ cups miniature marshamallows, optional for rocky road (I used my homemade ones and chopped them small)
1 cup toasted and lightly salted almonds, chopped, optional for rocky road

Directions

1. 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.
2. Warm the milk, sugar, and salt in the same saucepan. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolk. Slowly pour the warm milk into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.
3. Stir the mixture constantly over the medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula (170°F on an instant-read thermometer). 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. (The strainer is important as it catches any bit of egg that accidentally got "scrambled" instead of turned into the custard. Trust me, you don't want eggs in your ice cream)
4. Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator (I like to do this overnight to make sure its nice and cold), 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 it out.)