Chilli chocolate ice cream!

It is the middle of winter here in Canberra, so – rather oddly – my thoughts keep turning to ice cream. All my ice cream recipes (you can see a bunch more here) are made with basic ingredients rather than the chemical cocktails you find in the proprietary stuff, and can be made without any fancy equipment.

300 ml pouring cream
100 to 150 grams chocolate (dark or milk, you choose)
1 fresh chilli (more or less, to taste)

Melt the chocolate and stir the chopped chilli through. Whip the cream. Once the melted chocolate has cooled down to room temperature, gently combine the ingredients. Pour into a container and freeze.

This recipe is still a work in progress in our house. The first time I made it I used 100 grams of milk chocolate and quite a large chilli, and we both felt it needed more chocolate and less chilli. The second time, I used 150 grams of dark chocolate and a smaller chilli. The mixture appeared a bit curdled (perhaps because the chocolate was still a little warm? more experimentation required!) and we both thought it could have done with more chilli, but it was wonderfully chocolatey. Will have to keep making it till I get the balance right!

Thanks to my colleague Greg (also mentioned in this post) for planting the idea of chilli chocolate ice cream in my mind. Greg gave me his recipe – which is much more complicated, and contains two types of chocolate, egg yolks, brown sugar, Kahlúa, and almonds – so I decided to try to make something simpler. I may try throwing Kahlúa and almonds into future versions though ... watch this space ...