Are you in the mood for homemade ice cream? If so, give this eggless recipe a try. It’s creamy and a little icy at the same time, which I love.
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1½ cups 2% milk
- ½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 cup sugar
- ¼ tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
- 1½ - 2 tsp. dark rum
- Place 1 cup of the heavy cream, the cocoa powder, sugar, and salt in a saucepan.
- Heat the mixture over medium low heat while whisking continuously until the sugar has just melted and the cocoa is fully incorporated. This will only take a a few minutes. Do not let the milk boil.
- Take the saucepan off the heat.
- Add the rest of the heavy cream, the 2% milk, the vanilla extract, and the rum.
- Whisk the mixture until smooth.
- Refrigerate the mixture at least 2 hours.
- Pour the mixture into your ice cream maker and follow the directions. In my ice cream maker, I ran it for 35 minutes.
- After the ice cream maker finishes, transfer the ice cream to a freezer-safe container. It will finish hardening in 2-4 hours.
In the past, I’ve tried a number of custard, or egg-based, recipes for homemade ice cream, but they always seem to end up with a texture that is too much like butter and/or they freeze too hard, so I decided to work on an eggless version.
There are so many great recipes out there, but I found inspiration from the Easy No-Cook Chocolate Ice Cream by TheSpruceEats and from a vanilla ice cream recipe called The Best (and Easiest) Ice Cream You’ll Ever Make by BareFeetintheKitchen. Be sure to check out their recipes too!
And while their recipes would be great without any changes, I couldn’t help myself from giving it my own twists. I used ingredients from TheSpruceEats recipe plus salt, rum, and lower fat milk, along with some of the techniques from the BareFeetintheKitchen recipe.
I started by whisking 1 cup of the heavy cream, cocoa powder, sugar, and salt in a saucepan over medium heat until the sugar melted and the cocoa powder was completely incorporated. It only took a few minutes (around 3 or 4 minutes), and the result looks like a thin chocolate syrup.
Then I took the saucepan off the heat, added the rest of the heavy cream, the 2% milk, the vanilla extract, and the rum, and whisked the mixture until it was smooth. The mixture turned from a thin chocolate syrup into a mixture that looked like chocolate milk.
The next step tests my patience but is important. You need to refrigerate the mixture for at least 2 hours. Then pour it into your ice cream maker and follow the directions for your particular model. For mine, I ran it for 35 minutes, which resulted in a soft chocolate ice cream that I transferred it to freezer-safe containers and froze it until it finished hardening. Of course, for quality purposes, I tried a spoonful every hour or so.
Within 2-4 hours, I had yummy chocolate ice cream. There’s only a hint of rum flavor, so it doesn’t overwhelm the chocolate. But the rum also prevents the ice cream from freezing too hard. Also, by using the 2% milk, the texture of the ice cream was creamy but also really cold and a little icy. Those qualities remind me of my absolute all-time favorite Dutch chocolate ice cream from Blue Bell, which brings back good memories.
Pinot & Pie
