With the aid of Leah White, my pastry chef (who has been a great help with various puddings and pastries and their technicalities), we tried to create a wonderful dark bitter chocolate ice cream. We have failed so far, so if anybody can help, please communicate with us at St. John at 011 44 20 7251 0848. Even so, seeing as chocolate ice cream is fundamental, I have included the recipe we currently use. It is not as dark or as bitter as I could wish for, but is rich and delicious.
I’m afraid before you go any further you will need an ice-cream machine.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of a vanilla and tarragon ice cream in the back of my head for a while, but I was finally inspired to give it a shot after reading about Hank Shaw’s Oregano Ice Cream on his blog, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook. I highly recommend adding it to your favorites, Hank updates often, and it’s always a good read. Anyhow, after I picked up the ice cream maker I remembered that I had needed to buy one to make this recipe. Two birds with one stone!

The recipe starts off with simply bringing a little over two cups of milk and heavy cream to a boil, and then dropping the heat down to let things sit at a simmer.

My wife brought home some 70% cocoa solid buttons made by El Rey. These were roughly chopped …

… and added to the milk/cream mixture.

While the chocolate begain melting and mixing with the dairy, I had my standing mixer whisk half a dozen egg yolks with confectioner’s sugar. The recipe asked for caster sugar but my local megamart was fresh out.

Once the sugar was completely integrated with the yolks I tempered it, added it to the pot on the stove, and stirred until it was nice and thick.

In the meantime I chopped up some Lindt unsweetened chocolate and added it to the pot, which made the mixture a very rich, dark brown once it melted.

I let the chocolate cool a little bit, and then strained it through a sieve to remove any small particles of unmelted chocolate.

As a kid, my father used to make the best vanilla ice cream; however, the machine seemed to take forever, and even when it was done the ice cream was really soupy. We’d have to stick the canister in the freezer and wait even longer for it to really be considered ice cream. Technology is an amazing thing, because now we can have real, honest to goodness ice cream in under 20 minutes.

Here’s the ice cream with some pirouette cookies and a little bit of bittersweet chocolate grated on top. Mr. Henderson couldn’t have described the results any more aptly. The general consensus was that it was indeed “rich and delicious”. Too many desserts these days are cloyingly saccharine, but this was not overly sweet, which was a welcome surprise.

One down, one hundred and thirteen to go.