Chocolate Raspberry Ice Cream

An Alton Brown / David Lebovitz mashup.

This week we’re making Chocolate Raspberry ice cream, which was a request from Jaya, the daughter of some friends.

I decided to do a mash-up of Alton Brown’s vanilla base and some of the chocolate ingredients and ratios from The Perfect Scoop. Brown and Lebovitz. Evil vs. Good. Coming together again this week!

I figured I would alter Brown’s vanilla recipe by using raspberry preserves for both the pectin and the flavor. And then add some chocolate to the base based on some of Lebovitz’s recipes. Plus a raspberry swirl to tie it all together like Lebowski’s rug.

Had most of the ingredients on hand this week, except raspberries.

Clockwise from top left: Add sugar and raspberry preserves, milk, cream, and then stir.

Once I had the Alton Brown base, it was time to add some chocolate. Per David Lebovitz, I decided to use a mix of cocoa powder (5 tablespoons) and unsweetened chocolate (about 3 ounces).

Clockwise from top left: add cocoa powder, stir, melt chocolate using a double boil, and then add the melted chocolate.

At this point, I tasted the mixture. While I could detect some raspberry flavor, it was not strong enough. Therefore, I had to make a mix-in.

That about sums up my feelings towards mix-ins. But soldier on we must!

Heated some raspberries with 2 tablespoons of sugar.

It’s a ripple! It’s a coulis! It’s a…raspberry swirl.

I let everything sit in the fridge for about 8 hours.

Prior to churning, the mixture was looking a bit grainy, which surprised me given that I melted the chocolate before incorporating it. I tasted the mixture and confirmed: it did indeed have a grainy texture.¹ I tried the immersion blender trick and tasted it again. No luck; still grainy. I decided to proceed with churning in the hopes the problem would somehow work itself out.

Alas, I tasted it after churning and regrettably, it came out grainy. This photo of the churn paddle shows the problem:

What the fuck happened here?

I also struggled to incorporate the raspberry swirl into the ice cream. I don’t think I made the swirl thick enough to maintain its integrity while it was being folded into the ice cream. Not only that, I was working a bit too fast and loose and I made a mess that required some serious clean-up in and around the machine. The ice cream containers looked all bootsy as I was sticking them in the freezer to harden.

That don’t look right on a number of levels, starting with the unmixed-in “mix-in” blob sitting at the top.

Needless to say, I was feeling pretty demoralized by the whole effort, and was contemplating chucking the entire batch in the compost and starting over—another sign that perhaps I’m devoting a bit too much energy to this blog. But you can’t just throw out ice cream, even a batch that’s gritty like the PB&J sammie you accidentally dropped in the sand that day at the beach all those years ago when you were 8 years old.

Anyway, here’s the finished result:

The raspberry swirl looks mixed in, but don't be fooled!

The taste was quite good, and it scooped pretty well. But the texture? No bueno. And not enough mix in, just like last week.

Final Takeaways

I’m 1 for 3 in my attempts to make chocolate ice cream (with this one being the only success thus far). This feels sad given that chocolate is one of my favorite—if not all-time favorite—flavors. It reminds me of an adage that’s popular amongst some English teachers: never teach your favorite book. If you’re too close to the material, you won’t be able to properly teach it. So you just gotta avoid it. Perhaps this is the case with me and chocolate ice cream.

But nah, it’s just that damn unsweetened chocolate. Why the hell doesn’t it incorporate smoothly?! I don’t understand it. I might leave it out in the future. Or, at the very least, leave it out until I figure out how to incorporate it the right way.²

Anyway, apologies to Jaya for not producing the best result in response to your request this week! I hope you still enjoy the ice cream!

See you all next week.

1. What I mean by “grainy” is there are very tiny bits of unmelted chocolate, which give the mixture a slightly sandy texture.

2. All of this is making me think I might have to give chocolate the same treatment I gave vanilla: try out a bunch of different chocolate recipes so I can figure out all the tricks and work out all the kinks.