RECIPE: Fudge ripple ice cream (aka my favorite ice cream flavor on the planet)

I’m starting to see more and more fall-inspired recipes and produce popping up with the end of summer ever-approaching, and I’ve started turning to year-round favorites to cope with the loss of stone fruit and summer berries.

This fudge ripple ice cream represents my favorite ice cream flavor. But if I’m being honest, plain old vanilla ice cream served the role of favorite flavor for most of my life -- only recently have I changed allegiances ever so slightly to give fudge sauce its due.

I love this ice cream by itself, I love it with salted caramel sauce, I love it atop a brownie, I love it in a s’mores sundae, and most of all: I love that I can enjoy it anytime of year. Seasons be damned.

RECIPE: Fudge ripple ice cream (aka my favorite ice cream flavor on the planet)

Fudge ripple sauce - adapted from Epicurious - yield: 1 pint (you’ll have extra - scale down if you want)

MISE IT

200 grams (organic) sugar
160 grams glucose syrup (use light corn syrup if you’re a regular person and don’t stock glucose at home)
250 grams water (~1 cup)
100 grams dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

MAKE IT

Combine all ingredients except for your vanilla extract into a medium saucepan, place it over medium heat, and start whisking.
Whisk until mixture until all cocoa powder is incorporated into the mixture, then switch to a heat-proof spatula. To keep mixture from burning on the bottom, move the spatula through the sauce constantly, making figure 8s and scraping the bottom of the pan to ensure nothing is sticking and periodically scraping down the sides if any sauce has started sticking there, too. Keep mixing until sauce is boiling.
Once mixture is boiling, keep mixing for one minute, then remove from heat.
Keep mixing every minute or so until it cools down so that it’s not super-hot to the touch.
Transfer sauce into a sealable container and chill in the fridge. This sauce is easiest to work with once chilled, and it needs to be chilled before you mix your ice cream (you don’t want it to melt all your hard work!)

Vanilla ice cream - adapted from the humphry slocombe ice cream book; yield = 1 quart

MISE IT

465g heavy cream (~2 cups)
245g whole milk (~1 cup)
100g white sugar
47g brown sugar
50g egg yolks (~3 eggs)
3 pinches of kosher salt
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

MAKE IT

Create an ice bath for your final mixture to cool down in a large mixing bowl.
In a medium saucepan, combine cream, milk, and salt. Heat over medium or medium-high until it’s just at a soft boil, then remove from heat.
Whisk together your sugar and egg yolks until combined. This will form a thick paste.
Temper your egg mixture by ladling (or carefully pouring straight from the pan) ¼ - ⅓ cup of your hot cream mixture into the bowl with your eggs+sugar, whisking constantly to start melding the two mixtures together. Repeat with a few more ladles worth of the cream mixture, and then transfer the tempered mixture back into your saucepan.
Over medium-high heat, heat your base and use a spatula to draw figure-8s shapes repeatedly through the mixture to keep everything moving so it doesn’t stick to the bottom. Do this until it thickens slightly and reaches a temperature of 170 - 172 F, then remove from heat. (You’ve made creme anglaise!)
Pour your creme anglaise mixture through a chinoise or fine-meshed strainer into a container over an ice bath. Add vanilla extract to the strained base.
Stir periodically and let mixture cool down to room temperature. Then let mixture chill for at least an hour and up to 2 days in the refrigerator.
Before you spin your ice cream: place a baking dish and spatula in the freezer (I use the smaller of these two dishes) so your finished ice cream will go into a chilled container and not melt.
Follow the instructions for your ice cream machine and spin your ice cream. Before you remove the ice cream from the machine, have your chilled container and your (room temperature or cooler) fudge sauce ready.
To achieve the fudge ripple swirl effect, you will drizzle in your fudge sauce in batches as your transfer your ice cream from the machine to its final chilled container. This assembly process is sort of like putting together lasagna, except your alternate between ice cream and fudge sauce instead of pasta/cheese/sauce. Note: you will have extra fudge sauce, so you do not need to incorporate all of it into your ice cream. Using a spoon or spatula, drizzle a few spoonfuls of fudge sauce into the bottom of your container, making a zig-zag pattern to achieve the “ripple” effect, then transfer 1/4 - 1/3 of your ice cream into the container. Add another drizzled layer of fudge before adding another 1/4 - 1/3 of your ice cream to the container. Repeat until you have added all of your ice cream to the container, then add one final drizzled layer of fudge sauce on top. You can use a toothpick or kebab skewer to style the fudge ripples if you want (that’s what I did for the batch pictured here).
Let ice cream set for a few hours.

Special equipment

TWEAK IT

Mix in (salted) caramel sauce for a dual-swirl ice cream.
Use vanilla paste instead of vanilla extract to get the little specks of vanilla bean in your final ice cream. (Make at 1:1 substitution here.)
Eat it alone or with any of the toppings your heart desires - it’d also be divine as the middle of a whoopie pie ice cream sandwich, which I’ve now added to my list of future recipe ideas.

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