How About Some Chocolate Ice Cream with a Bit of Trail Mix
While I was down in the basement working out, I heard my youngest daughter upstairs in the kitchen preparing something.
My daughter has cerebral palsy and uses a walker to get around so I could hear the wheels rolling back and forth as she pulled ingredients out of the refrigerator and prepped them to make this chocolate trail mix ice cream. Basically she made a chocolate ice cream with the addition of trail mix consisting of M&M’s, assorted nuts and craisins.
I couldn’t have been prouder.
What makes this ice cream so easy to prepare is you don’t need to combine the main ingredients over heat before chilling like you do with egg based ice cream or gelato. Just mix everything in a bowl, set in the refrigerator a while and prepare in an ice cream machine.
The addition of the trail mix comes in the last 5 minutes of freezing in the ice cream maker. For the record, I didn’t serve the ice cream with trail mix. It’s just for the photo.
What’s the Difference Between Ice Cream and Gelato?
I get asked this a lot so go to my post Difference Between Ice Cream & Gelato
Chocolate Trail Mix Ice Cream
Equipment
- Ice Cream Machine
Ingredients
- ¾ cup cocoa powder sifted
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ⅓ cup sugar dark or light brown
- 1 pinch sea salt
- 1 cup whole milk
- 2 cups heavy cream
- ½ tablespoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup trail mix
Instructions
- In a bowl big enough to hold all the above ingredients, combine the cocoa powder mix with the sugars and salt.
- Add the milk and combine using a hand mixer set on low speed or a whisk like I did until everything is dissolved and combined well.
- Add the heavy cream and vanilla and whisk until everything is again well combined. You now have your ice base.
- Cover and refrigerate for a minimum of 2 hours or as long as overnight. Maddie let it sit overnight before adding to the ice cream machine.
- Before you add the base mixture to your ice cream maker, be sure to whisk it again.
- Follow your cream maker’s instructions and let it do its magic for about 40 - 50 minutes. During the last 5 minutes, add the trail mix so it gets well combined with the ice cream.
- At this time, the ice cream will be soft with a creamy texture, too soft for my liking so I stick it back into the freezer for a couple of hours to let it firm up.
- Before serving, remove it from the freezer for 5 to 10 minutes, if you can wait that long.
Well done, Maddie! It’s like a big old Chunky Bar, but frozen! Nice!
Maddie ROCKS!! I tried making ice cream and, well, it was not quite the success that I see here. I bet it was delicious!
that’s look great – just what I could eat right now – hot and sunny in UK. If I was to make it here, what is “heavy cream” – we have double, whipping and single cream in UK – assume it is double cream ?
Heather, after a quick research, US heavy cream is “similar” to English double cream but not nearly as good. One commenter on another site said, “fresh double cream (which is, as the title suggests, fresh, and pasteurised, but not ultra heat treated like heavy cream). It has a higher fat content than heavy cream – it is delicious and readily available.”
This makes me wonder why we can’t get a similar product here. I wonder if you can buy imported double cream?
Thank you – I will have a go at making it later this week with double cream – I am sure it will pass the taste test with my sons !