Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Mint ice cream is love. Well, for me it is. I don't think there is any ice cream out there that taste better than mint ice cream. There a lot of people that disagree with me, it's pretty contriversal, especially with my boyfriend and my mom. It's funny how we can get into the silliest of arguments. Well, they're not really arguments, there just debates I guess.

My boyfriend loves birthday cake ice cream. I however loath birthday cake ice cream. Something about just... grosses me out. The taste all together just doesn't taste right to me. And my mom loves Rocky Road. I do like Rocky Road Ice Cream as well, I just don't love it. My brother is on my side with Mint Ice Cream being the best. He's a mint lover like myself. And since I just recently got an Ice Cream Maker (finally!), I wanted to make his and my favorite Ice Cream; Mint Chocolate Chip.

I did not come up with this recipe, I actually found it at Simple Recipes by Elise. I love a lot of the things she comes up with, and I finally came around to trying one of hers out. And I got to tell you; It tasted so good! I didn't add as much chocolate as she did. I didn't want to much chocolate it it. It came out so creamy, silky, and, of course, minty! This is defiantly something I am going to be making over and over and over again.

Recipe
Adapted here from Simply Recipes

3 cups fresh mint leaves, rinsed, drained, packed
1 cup milk
2 cups heavy cream
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
6 egg yolks
3-4 ounces dark chocolate, chopped (keep in freezer til used)


1. Firstly, take the fresh mint leaves, rid the stems, then rinse, drain, and pack it. Put the mint leaves in a heavy saucepan with the 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of the cream. Heat until just steaming (do not let boil), remove from heat, cover. Let stand for 30 minutes. Reheat the mixture until steaming, remove from heat and let stand for 15 more minutes.

2. While the mint is infusing in step 1, prepare the remaining cream over an ice bath. Pour the remaining 1 cup of cream into a medium size metal bowl, set in ice water (with lots of ice) over a larger bowl. Set a mesh strainer on top of the bowls. Set aside.

3. Strain the milk cream mixture into a bowl, pressing against the mint leaves with a rubber spatula in the sieve to get the most liquid out of them. Return the milk cream mixture to the saucepan. Add sugar and salt to the mixture. Heat until just steaming again, stirring until sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat.

4. Whisk the egg yolks in a medium sized bowl. Slowly pour the heated milk cream mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly so that the egg yolks are tempered by the warm mixture, but not cooked by it. Scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.

5. Return the saucepan to the stove, stirring the mixture constantly over medium heat with a wooden spoon, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spoon so that you can run your finger across the coating and have the coating not run. This can take about 10 minutes.

6. Pour the custard through the strainer and stir into the cold cream to stop the cooking.

7. Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator (at least a couple of hours) or stir the mixture in the bowl placed over the ice bath until thoroughly chilled (20 minutes or so). Freeze the mixture in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

8. Once the ice cream has been made in the ice cream maker it should be pretty soft. Gently fold in the finely chopped chocolate. Put in an airtight container and place in the freezer for at least an hour, preferably several hours. If it has been frozen for more than a day, you may need to let it sit at room temperature for a few minutes to soften it before serving.