Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream
How to best combine these two classic ingredients?
There are many ways you can combine chocolate and/or peanut butter into ice cream, but if we’re talking specifically about “Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream”, it ultimately breaks down into three configurations: a peanut butter ice cream base with a chocolate mix-in; a chocolate ice cream base with a peanut butter mix-in; or a base consisting of chocolate and peanut butter swirled together.
Last week, when I decided to go with chocolate peanut butter as this week’s flavor, I intended to go with option one, with a chocolate fudge ripple serving as the mix-in. But as winter break approaches and my laziness kicks into high gear, I defaulted to the easier route—that being option three.
David Lebovitz had me covered in this regard. While he has recipes that would satisfy options 1 and 2, his option 3 recipe had the level of ease I was looking for. The recipe is very easy; just whisk together five ingredients—cocoa powder, smooth peanut butter, sugar, salt, and half & half—and then churn, no heating required. The measurements are: 1/2 cup PB, 1/4 cocoa, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 cups half & half, and a pinch of salt.
Lebovitz says not to use “natural” peanut butter, leading me to assume that he envisions using a more processed smooth peanut butter like Skippy. I decided to ignore that direction since I only had natural peanut butter on hand. And of course, I added in my two new favorite ingredients—a 1/4 tsp of guar gum and 2 tbsps of corn syrup.
Putting together the base was quick and easy. Just combine everything pictured above and whisk it together.
I didn’t think the cocoa and peanut butter were sufficiently combined after whisking for 2 minutes. So I used the old stick blender, and that seemed to do the trick.
Since you never heat the mixture, I could have churned this immediately, but I put it in the fridge for about 3 hours.
And here’s the final product:
Taste-wise, this came out good, which feels noteworthy given that the recipe is so simple and easy.1 And not to nitpick Lebovitz, but I think using the natural peanut is a real plus here. The chocolate flavor is about what you’d expect from adding a 1/4 cup of cocoa powder, but the peanut flavor really comes through, and I think that’s due to the inclusion of the natural peanut butter (Kirkland Signature peanut butter, I might add!).
In terms of texture, well, that’s a different story. Some of the adjectives my family tossed around the dinner table were:
Gummy
Claggy
Mushy
Fudgy
Gooey
The problem is that the ice cream never really solidified. After almost 24 hours in the freezer, it still had that Wendy’s Frosty consistency. Now look, I like a Frosty as much as the next guy, but it got all oozy after only a minute after being scooped, which indicates it didn’t have enough body.
The culprit here is either the natural peanut butter or the guar gum. Since Lebovitz cautioned against using natural PB, it very well could be that. But I consulted Kaldunski’s recipe book, and she calls for natural PB in her recipe, and based on the photo in her book, it looks like the ice cream comes out just fine.
So maybe I should have omitted the guar gum? As much as it shocks me to say it, I think the answer might be yes. I’ll have to make this again sometime and find out.
Well, we’re running out the clock on 2024. Only two weeks left. Next week: Eggnog Ice Cream. See you then!
That’s not to say that complicated recipes are always better. But sometimes simplicity and ease produce an inferior quality ice cream.