I made this ice cream for my friend Andy Sams recently. Andy took me on an expedition to Cicero, Indiana in search of “Chocolate Almond Ice Cream” and, alas, we arrived at Alexander’s ice cream shack and they no longer had it. Andy had described it to me on the way as:

  • Deeply chocolately
  • Packed with large almonds, even whole almonds

That’s all I had to work with when I decided to make it for him. Let’s start with his review of what I created:

Scott the Chocolate Almond Ice Cream was out of this world GREAT!!! Thank you I really enjoyed it. Brought back memories so far back I can’t remember when I had real Chocolate Almond ice cream like that before.

And that type of feedback made all the effort that went into it fantastically worthwhile. I started from this but I made some changes as I went so the whole process is below.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 cups whole milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 4 tablespoons cocoa powder
  • 6 egg yolks
  • 4 ounces Ghirardelli baking chocolate, grated
  • 4 cups heavy cream
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 1/2 cups toasted whole almonds, partially diced (think LARGE chunks / whole almods)

Steps

  1. Preheat the oven to 300.
  2. On a cookie sheet place the whole and chopped almonds.
  3. Back for 10 minutes shaking the sheet a few times.
  4. Remove from the oven and transfer to a plate or bowl so they don’t continue to cook.
  5. Combine sugar, milk, salt and cocoa powder in a large saucepan over medium heat, stirring continually. Bring to a simmer, without boiling.
  6. Take the egg yolks and beat them slightly in a separate small bowl; stir about 3/4 cup of the hot chocolate liquid into the egg yolks bowl.
  7. Pour the egg yolk mixture into the saucepan with the remainder of the chocolate mixture.
  8. Heat until mixture is thick, but do not boil. Remove from heat and stir in the shaved chocolate.
  9. Pour into a glass bowl and refrigerate for about two hours, stirring occasionally. If you want it to cool faster then put it inside an ice water bath (water will pull the heat out of it faster than just the code air in the fridge).
  10. After mixture is chilled, stir in the 4 cups of cream and the vanilla. At this point you should taste it and revel in great joy at how good it tastes. This is the very essence of Chocolate Ice Cream!
  11. Pour all into an ice cream maker and freeze according to your ice maker directions.
  12. Note: Generally you put the container in the bucket, with the dasher inside. Place the motor over the ice cream can cover, and plug it in. While it’s running, layer ice and rock salt–about 2 inches of ice, then 1/4 cup of rock salt, over and over until you have ice on the top. Be sure churn is moving while you add ice, or it may not start properly.
  13. Once ice cream maker stops churning, add almonds to the churned ice cream and mix them together well. Put ice cream into containers and freeze for later use.