Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

A picture of some home made ice-cream by Keiko, writer of Nordljus. More recipes and all about food can be found at the beautiful blog, Nordljus.

Come spring in Sweden and the newspapers begin to review the upcoming launches of new ice-creams for the summer, everything from tub ice-creams, ice-cream on sticks to ice-cream in cafés are reviewed, to get to know the crème de la crème of ice-creams for the summer. It’s high summer and I’ve been doing my fair share of ice-cream epicureaning, well alright, more like devouring.

When it comes to tub ice-creams, Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie would be my absolute favourite. B&J’s is an eco aware organization, as the BBC news reports, and taste / texture wise, B&J’s beats Haagen Daz any day, the latter being a tad too sweet for my liking. What gives B&J’s a fair fight would be the Italian Gelato and Hokkaido ice-cream sold at the basement of Takashimaya, Ngee Ann City in Singapore – those, I love too.

Ice-creams can easily be home made, with one of my favourite recipes being Chocolate Gelato.

Chocolate Gelato recipe
1 cup sugar
2 cups milk
1 cup cocoa powder, sifted
3 1/2 ounces or 100g bittersweet chocolate, chopped
4 egg yolks, beaten lightly

In a heavy saucepan cook 1/4 cup sugar, undisturbed, over moderate heat until it begins to melt and cook, stirring with fork, until melted completely and deep golden brown. Remove pan from heat and dip pan briefly into a bowl of ice water to stop cooking. (Caramel will harden). Cool pan about 5 minutes and return to heat. Add milk and cook over moderate heat, whisking until caramel is melted. Whisk in cocoa until combined well and keep mixture warm.

In a metal bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water melt chocolate, stirring, and remove from heat. In a bowl with an electric mixer beat egg yolks with remaining 3/4 cup sugar until thick and pale. Whisk in caramel mixture and chocolate in streams, whisking until combined. Pour custard into another 3 quart heavy saucepan and cook over moderately low heat until a candy thermometer registers 140 F or 60 deg C. Cook custard stirring (do not let it boil), 4 minutes more and remove from heat. Cool custard completely and freeze in an ice cream maker.

Enjoy!