Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Ice Cream

I have pretty great mem­o­ries of Baskin Rob­bins Ice Cream. Aside from the rit­ual once a week trip that The Chef and I would make after we got mar­ried but before we had kids, I have to admit to sluff­ing church a few times as a teenager and rac­ing to the BR in the neigh­bor­ing town to sneak a dou­ble scoop before my par­ents knew I’d left!  At the time it was one of just a hand­ful of busi­nesses open on Sun­day. I felt like such a rebel!

What was my dou­ble scoop of choice, you ask? Well, the top scoop var­ied: Jamoca Almond Fudge, Gold Medal Rib­bon, World Class Choco­late, Choco­late Mousse Royale.…..mixing it up on top was allowed. How­ever; the bot­tom scoop always remained the same, to be savored and unsul­lied by any other flavor:

Choco­late Rasp­berry Truffle.

I almost shiver as I type it. Choco­late–the fla­vor of the gods. Rasp­berry–the most deli­cious fruit known to man. Truf­fle–are you kid­ding me? The Fla­vor of the Gods has never been man­i­fest in a more fit­ting form!  The com­bi­na­tion of the three seemed the most cor­rect prin­ci­ple I had encoun­tered up until that time!! It was manna worth break­ing the Sab­bath for! Once or twice, I mean.….and only dur­ing my most sassy  of my teenage stages.…I swear!

Many a rap­tur­ous con­ver­sa­tion has ensued between BFF Kel­lie and I with whom, even though raised a thou­sand miles away from each other, I share an eerie amount of child­hood sim­i­lar­ity.  It remains, to this day, the pin­na­cle of ice cream fla­vors to the both of us. A bit of us each died the day BR removed it from their reg­u­lar menu, only res­ur­rect­ing it for a brief period of time before seem­ingly tak­ing it away forever.

At least here in Utah.

Does it exist else­where? Did my scan­dalous Sun­day sin­ning result in a ban­ish­ment of my favorite chilly con­fec­tion from wher­ever I might live? Does ANYONE have access to this fla­vor at their local BR par­lor? If not, I feel culpable.

And respon­si­ble.

Respon­si­ble to offer an alternative.

After many years of seri­ous con­tem­pla­tion, and sev­eral months of trial and error, I offer this hum­ble, yet deli­cious recipe to amend my likely wrongdoing.

What am I say­ing?!? This recipe is NOT hum­ble, nor is it merely deli­cious!! When I finally hit upon the final prod­uct, I was brought to my KNEES!!  I have held the orig­i­nal BR CRT on a PEDESTAL for these many years! And I ‘m pretty sure I remem­ber it rightly, but I can­not lie. This. Ice. Cream. Is. EVEN BETTER!

I’m sure it has to do with qual­ity of ingre­di­ents. I doubt BR man­dated the use of fine choco­late and fresh rasp­ber­ries, and I’m pretty darn sure they didn’t use Rasp­berry Fram­boise in their truffles!

Nev­er­the­less; I will con­tinue to honor the orig­i­nal. In mem­ory. But I no longer have to mourn! Instead  I cel­e­brate! Because now I ( and you ) can make it any old darn time I (or you ) please!!

 

The Truf­fles

3/4 cup heavy cream

4 Table­spoons corn syrup

9 oz. bit­ter­sweet choco­late (usu­ally will have a 65–70% label­ing and say ‘bittersweet’)

1 Table­spoon unsalted but­ter, soft­ened to room temperature

2 tsp. Rasp­berry fram­boise or 1/2 tsp. rasp­berry flavoring

In a small, heavy saucepan, place the cream and the corn syrup. Heat to a slight sim­mer. Pull from the heat and add the choco­late, but­ter, and fram­boise or fla­vor­ing. Stir gen­tly together until choco­late is melted and the mix­ture is smooth. Put truf­fle mix­ture into a bowl and cover with plas­tic wrap. Freeze for an hour or so.

Remove from freezer and, usung a small cookie scoop (size 60), scoop a half-scoop full and put onto a bak­ing sheet lined with a Sil­pat or plas­tic wrap. They should be about the size of large grapes. The con­sis­tency of this truf­fle mix­ture will vary depend­ing on the choco­late that you use. I actu­ally find that the bet­ter the qual­ity of choco­late, the less firm the truf­fles end up being. Since this is a frozen appli­ca­tion, the firm­ness doesn’t mat­ter so much. This truf­fle is per­fect. How­ever; I would not use this recipe for tra­di­tional truf­fles. Another ratio of ingre­di­ents would work bet­ter for that.

Cover with plas­tic wrap and freeze until ice cream is fin­ished. This admit­tedly is an extrav­a­gant amount of truf­fles for this amount of ice cream. My motives in scal­ing the recipe thus shall remain pri­vate. If it just seems too lav­ish as you go to stir them in, by all means save some out to **ahem** share with your loved ones.

The Choco­late Rasp­berry Ice Cream

Makes a healty (slightly larger than) 2 quart por­tion.  I just freeze two seper­ate batches as my ice cream  freezer holds no more than 2 quarts.

4 cups raspberries

3 cups heavy cream

5 T dutch cocoa

5 oz. good qual­ity bit­ter­sweet chocolate

5 oz. good qual­ity milk chocolate

3 cups 1/2 & 1/2

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/8th tsp. kosher salt

10 large egg yolks

1 tsp. vanilla

Begin by puree­ing the rasp­ber­ries in a food proces­sor or blender. Scrape every­thing into a seive small enough to catch the seeds and press as much puree through as you pos­si­bly can. I even take it a step fur­ther and put the remain­ing pulp/juice/seeds in a cheese­cloth or dish­towel and squeeze as much juice as I can into the rasp­berry pulp. Set aside.

Heat the heavy cream in a heavy, medium sized saucepan. Add the cocoa and whisk together until incor­po­rated. When cream/cocoa mix­ture is quite hot, but not boil­ing, remove from the heat and add the chopped bit­ter­sweet and milk choco­late. Stir together until the choco­late is melted and well mixed into the cream. Set aside in a large bowl.

In a medium bowl, whisk the egg yolks. Set aside.

In the same heavy saucepan, put the 1/2 & 1/2, the sugar, and the salt.  Warm ingre­di­ents through until quite hot, but not boiling.

Now you are going to TEMPER the eggs. This allows you to incor­po­rate the eggs with­out cook­ing them into a scramble.

It can be help­ful to sta­bal­ize the bowl with the egg yolks by wrap­ping a damp dish towel into a ring, and plac­ing the bowl into the ring like a bird in a nest. Or have some­one hold the bowl for you.  While whisk­ing con­stantly, pour the warm milk/sugar mix­ture SLOWLY into the whisked eggs. Don’t stop whisk­ing! As you add more and more of the milk, you can pour it in faster.

Then scrape the egg/milk mix­ture back into the heavy saucepan. Cook this mix­ture, stir­ring con­stantly, over medium-high heat, until it slightly boils and thick­ens. It should coat the back of a clean spoon well.

Set a seive over the large bowl con­tain­ing the chocolate/cream mix­ture. Pour the egg mix­ture into the seive, let­ting the seive catch any bits of cooked egg (there are always some bits, it seems!)

Now add the rasp­berry puree you pre­pared ear­lier and set aside.

Stir this mix­ture together well. This is your ice cream/custard base. Freeze it accord­ing to the direc­tions of what­ever ice cream freezer you own. You will need to freeze in two batches if your ice cream freezer holds 2 quarts or less. Admit­tedly I could have scaled down the recipe, but it seemed a sin, as this ice cream is SO GOOD that less is just WRONG!!

When ice cream is prop­erly frozen, remove from machine and mix in the truf­fles that you have set aside in your freezer. Some of the truf­fles I cut in half to vary the size a bit. Put into con­tain­ers and store in the freezer.

 

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