July 4, 2012 | Desserts
Do you think there is any better time than the 4th of July, usually a hot summer day here in Colorado, to break out a new ice cream flavor? Ladies and gentlemen and kids of all ages (drumroll please), I give you…S’Mores Ice Cream. All the flavor of a classic S’More – chocolate, marshmallow and graham crackers – without standing over a hot fire to make it.
One of the girls on my recent trip to Italy is quite into baking and had told me she had created a S’Mores cupcake – that’s all I needed to hear and I knew I’d be making this ice cream. I used my basic vanilla custard ice cream as a base, turning half of it into chocolate ice cream. I mixed marshmallows and broken graham crackers into the chocolate, and chocolate chips and crackers into the vanilla. Freeze each one individually until nearly firm, then alternate scooping from each one into a single container to get a sort of marbled ice cream with premium add ins. Hurry kids – there’s still time to make this today before tonight’s holiday cook out!
- 4 cups half and half
- 6 egg yolks
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ cup cocoa powder
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1 cup mini marshmallows
- 6 graham crackers, broken into pieces
- 1 cup chocolate chips
- Whisk together 2 cups of the half and half with the egg yolks and sugar and cook in the top of a double boiler until thickened, about 5 minutes. Pour half of this mixture into a 4 cup covered container, add the vanilla extract and 1 cup of the heavy cream. Whisk the cocoa into the remaining hot custard mixture, then pour this into a 4 cup covered container along with the remaining 1 cup of heavy cream. Chill the ice cream mixtures completely.
- Freeze ice cream, one flavor at a time, in an ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s directions. When the chocolate is semi-firm, remove from the machine into a covered container and stir in marshmallows and half of the broken crackers. When the vanilla is semi-firm, remove from machine and stir in the chocolate chips and the other half of the crackers. Chill both in the freezer until nearly solid.
- Scoop some of each flavor into a third container, pressing together as you go, to create a marbled ice cream. Freeze until solid.
