Diced! Dessert Bracket: Guinness Chocolate Ice Cream

I announced earlier that in honor of March Madness, I decided to create a dessert bracket with 16 styles of desserts. I’ve invited 16 great chefs to each take a category and make a recipe to enter into battle. I ranked the 16 based on my view of which was the favorite and like any bracket, the favorites are matched against the lower seeds. I won’t give you my seeding because I do not want to artificially impact your choices.

I will post a pairing each week on Wednesday and Thursday and open the polls for voting. The polls will be open from Thursday until the following Wednesday (before the next pair posts). The winner of each matchup with the most votes will move on to the next round and the chef will produce another recipe for their new matchup. The overall winner will receive any prizes I can acquire. To date the winner will receive:

• Dodo Book for Cooks
• A beautiful Bamboo Cutting Board with a Butterfly Motif, graciously donated by competitor Lindy (The Kozy Nook)

This week’s pairing is:

Pie (Non-Fruit) vs. Ice Cream

Today we have Alana from Cookyblogy with some scrumptious ice cream…

Introduction

My love of food started early but my love of cooking came much later. Cookyblogy is a place for food musings and afternoons spent in the kitchen.

Tis the season for ice cream…right?

In today’s edition, cookyblogy makes ice cream to challenge pies of non-fruit variety. It’s a friendly food competition…think March Madness with 100% more desserts.

Now if you’re like me, you might be enjoying the coldest winter in memory and suffering from shoveling blisters. You might also be thinking that this is hardly the time for ice cream.

However as I write this people are getting sloppy drunk and kissing strangers in honour of St. Patrick’s day. In conclusion: Guinness.

If I’m going to make ice cream in winter it might as well be festive and boozy. However, I don’t own an ice cream maker. That’s probably ok right? To the internets!

I emerged from my research several hours later. David Lebovitz doesn’t just cook and bake French food; he’s also an ice cream guy. I read his article called How to Make Ice Cream Without a Machine. So basically it just requires a bit of leg…er…arm work to get a nice creamy texture. No problem.

The Brown Eyed Baker supplied the ice cream inspiration with Guinness chocolate ice cream. Bam. We’re all set.

Guinness Chocolate Ice Cream

Ingredients:

7 ounces milk chocolate, finely chopped

1 cup whole milk

½ cup granulated sugar

Pinch of salt

4 egg yolks

1 cup heavy cream

¾ cup Guinness Stout

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Put the chocolate pieces in a large bowl and set a mesh strainer over the top.

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

3. 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 over the milk chocolate, then stir until the chocolate is melted. Once the mixture is smooth, whisk in the cream, then the Guinness and vanilla. Stir until cool over an ice bath.

Next, follow David Lebovitz‘s instructions for making ice cream by hand:

4. Put a deep baking dish, or bowl made of plastic, stainless steel or something durable in the freezer, and pour your custard mixture into it. (I used my Kitchen-Aid mixer bowl because there’s nothin’ it can’t do.)

5. After forty-five minutes, open the door and check it.

As it starts to freeze near the edges, remove it from the freezer and stir it vigorously with a spatula or whisk [or your mixer]. Really beat it up and break up any frozen sections. Return to freezer.

6. Continue to check the mixture every 30 minutes, stirring vigorously as it’s freezing. If you have one, you can use a hand-held mixer for best results, or use a stick-blender or hand-held mixer. [I’m way ahead of you.]

7. Keep checking periodically and stirring while it freezes (by hand or with the electric mixer) until the ice cream is frozen. It will likely take 2-3 hours to be ready.

Don’t forget to leave some time for panicking and wondering about what container is best for making the ice cream in. After 2 hours my ice cream is still drinkable. But left to its own devices overnight, it finally achieved an excellent ice cream-y texture. I gave it one last mix in the mixer and scraped it into its final resting place.

The verdict: excellent. The ice cream was creamy and tasted amazing. With only a hint of past hangovers from pub crawls in Kilkenny.

In conclusion: totally worth it. It’s inspiring many crazy thoughts of ice cream with Nutella, caramel, cherries, etc.