This is probably one of the more mainstream recipes out of the Humphrey Slocombe book – especially if you’re not sure about salt in desserts and decide to just leave it out. In that case, it’s just a great chocolate ice cream.
The base starts out with a caramel (that gets high marks in my book). The cream, milk and eggs are added to the caramel. Both chopped chocolate and cocoa powder are used to make a deep, flavorful chocolate.
Once the chocolate base is made, it gets a chill in an ice bath and in the refrigerator (I always chill my base a few hours, usually overnight). It’s churned in the ice cream maker, but once it’s done, the final touch is added: crunchy smoked salt. I used Maldon. When you take a bite of the ice cream, it’s a wonderfully smooth texture. But every so often you get a crunch of that smoked salt – more salty than smoky, but it’s terrific.
I admit I ate most of this batch myself. My excuse was that I was sick, and the cold ice cream soothed my sore throat. At one point we accidentally left the freezer cracked open and it melted to a pudding texture. I ate it anyway, and was inspired – this would make a fantastic chocolate pudding.
Take a peek at the recipe and a bit more of the book at Google Books.
- Chocolate Smoked Salt Ice Cream (Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream Book , p. 50)
I’ve never visited their shop in SF, but I love the idea and name of their “Secret Breakfast” ice cream. I didn’t realize they had a book out, now I’ll have to add this to my collection!
Oh, it’s pretty interesting, flavor-wise. The ice cream turns out very soft – three yolks for the base, e least egg-centric base I’ve ever made. I’m thinking I may bump up to five sometime.
The other thing, the ice cream keeps for a weirdly long time. We went out of town for a week after I made the white chocolate lavender, and then I forgot about it for a couple of weeks. I pulled it out to throw it away, but when I tried it, it was still really smooth and creamy – not icy at all.
Sounds great, Sheri! And, I like your excuse!