When I was in high school, I had pretty much the best job ever. I worked in an ice cream parlor that served homemade ice cream. I used to work in the back and made batch after batch of ice cream. People always used to ask me if I got tired of ice cream. In all honesty, not ever once. I could eat it all day, every day. I worked there for 7 years and I did eat it every day. The woman that owned it, Marlene, was one of the kindest and most loving people that I have been lucky enough to know. There were a bunch of teenage girls that worked in the store and she used to listen to us gripe about our parents and our boyfriends and she always gave great advice. She had a wicked sense of humor and could make me blush easily. She passed away a few years ago and think of her often. She was such an influence on my life.
While working at Penguins (isn’t that a cute name for an ice cream parlor?) there was much debate over mint chocolate chip ice cream. We had hundreds of flavors and were always coming up with new recipes and ways to improve on recipes, but mint chocolate chip was never quite right. People have very strong opinions on the way mint chocolate chip ice cream should be. Some want it to be green, some want it be white. Some want big chocolate chips while others want chocolate shavings. The problem I think that is the flavoring that we used was artificial. Once I had mint chocolate chip made with real mint, my life was changed forever.
I saw some mint at the farm stand that I could not leave without and brought home a few bunches and was not sure of what to do with it. I found David Lebovitz’s recipe for mint chocolate chip and took inspiration from him. While I do not like ice cream made with eggs, I loved the idea of steeping the mint leaves in cream. But, the thing that really sold me was the way he instructed to add the chips. He added streams of melted chocolate in layers to create the slivers of bittersweet chocolate. Heaven. When you put the ice cream scoop through the ice cream, you can hear the chocolate breaking apart. Oh. My. God.
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 cups heavy cream
1 Tablespoon vanilla
2 cups fresh mint leaves
4 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
Over medium low heat, simmer the mint leaves with the cream. As soon as the cream is hot, turn the heat off and let the mint steep in the cream for at least an hour.
Add the sugar and vanilla while the mixture is still warm.
Add the milk.
Strain out the mint leaves.
Push the mint leaves with a spatula to get out every last drop of mintyness.
Put the ice cream mixture in the fridge for two hours or overnight. It really helps with the freezing in the machine.
Pour the mixture into the ice cream maker. Follow the instructions that came with your ice cream maker. Mine takes about 30-40 minutes to freeze.
In the meantime, melt the chocolate. You could do this using a double boiler, but the microwave is my preferred method of choice to melt chocolate. 30 seconds at 50% power. Take it out and stir. Cook again in 15 second intervals, stirring until melted.
Decorate your container Jackson Pollock style.
Add about a third of the ice cream and drizzle the chocolate all over. The chocolate starts to freeze as soon as it hits the cold ice cream. So be generous with your chocolate drizzling.
Repeat the layers until you are out of ice cream and chocolate.
It is going to be super hard to do this, but you need to put this back in the freezer for another 2 hours or until it is frozen solid.
I may have made this for a little dinner party that we had a few nights ago.
I also may have made homemade brownies to sit underneath the mint chocolate chip ice cream. I also may have added my mom’s super secret chocolate sauce to go on top.
I know for sure that I was too busy stuffing my face with my brownie sundae to remember to take a picture of it all together. Oops. You would not have been thinking about grabbing your camera either. I do know for sure that I will never buy mint chocolate chip ice cream from the grocery store ever again. This was a-mazing.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups whole milk
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 3 cups heavy cream
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla
- 2 cups fresh mint leaves
- 4 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
Instructions
- Over medium low heat, simmer the mint leaves with the cream. As soon as the cream is hot, turn the heat off and let the mint steep in the cream for at least an hour.
- Add the sugar and vanilla while the mixture is still warm.
- Add the milk.
- Strain out the mint leaves.
- Push the mint leaves with a spatula to get out every last drop of mintyness.
- Put the ice cream mixture in the fridge for two hours or overnight. It really helps with the freezing in the machine.
- Pour the mixture into the ice cream maker. Follow the instructions that came with your ice cream maker. Mine takes about 30-40 minutes to freeze.
- In the meantime, melt the chocolate. You could do this using a double boiler, but the microwave is my preferred method of choice to melt chocolate. 30 seconds at 50% power. Take it out and stir. Cook again in 15 second intervals, stirring until melted.
- Add about a third of the ice cream and drizzle the chocolate all over. The chocolate starts to freeze as soon as it hits the cold ice cream. So be generous with your chocolate drizzling.
- Repeat the layers until you are out of ice cream and chocolate.
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
what a great recipe! chocolate mint is my favorite flavor. I can’t wait to try this! THANKS!! (and I used to manage a fro-yo store called Penguins. I hadn’t planned on it. I only even went in to the store the first time because I liked the name! lol!)
that is funny… you will love this if mint chocolate chip is your favorite flavor.
Oh this looks so good! Unfortunately, I do not have an ice cream machine
Perhaps I have a friend somewhere that would let me borrow theirs.
If you have a hard time with self-restraint, that is probably a good thing.
Mint chocolate is my favorite. This sounds wonderful
So many food bloggers are making this ice cream!! I must try out this recipe ASAP. Your ice cream looks amazing.
This icecream looks fantastic and must be delicious!
Need some advice – I tried this recipe, as mint chocolate ice cream is my favorite flavor, and I have been craving it non-stop (am due with #2 in 3 weeks…). However, when I made it, the mint flavor developed oddly – it tasted like mint leaves do when they’ve been left at the bottom of a cup of hot water. I heated the cream until just hot and followed your instructions to a t – where did I go wrong?
However, my ice cream does have a light green tint, which looks pretty cool
Thanks!
I wish that I could help… maybe too much mint? Mint varies from leaf to leaf, maybe you had a really strong bunch? Mine was a delicate mint flavor, not overpowering or bitter. Good luck with #2!
I am extremely excited to try the ice cream recipes you have, especially this one. I did have a question, however. What ice cream maker do you own? From the photos, and comparing the tops of them to ones online, it appears to be a Cuisinart ICE-30BC Pure Indulgence 2-Quart? (link from amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-ICE-30BC-Indulgence-2-Quart-Automatic/dp/B0006ONQOC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1279259996&sr=1-1)
Is that right? Were you looking at anything in particular when you were looking to purchase one? Just found your site a few days ago and absolutely love it. Keep up the great work!
Yes, that it what I have. I really like it. I wrote about it a little bit here at the end of this post.
http://bakedbree.com/cookies-and-cream-ice-cream
This was such a great recipe I only tweaked by using 1 1/4 cup mint to 3/4 cup rosemary and the flavor is very good. It might not go over really well with young kids but for the adults its wonderful. I want to use this same recipe to make ginger (ie switch out the mint for ginger) but I was curious as to how much ginger you think I would need to use for the infusion? I am not sure if it should be more or less than the mint.
the rosemary sounds delicious, I had something like that once in a restaurant and they floated the savory ice cream in a bowl of soup. So good. I would probably use less ginger as ginger can really strong. You can always add, but not take away.
I made this recipe back in July. The Washington Post had run an article about how to make ice cream without an ice cream maker using ziploc bags, ice and salt. In fact, that is how I found your blog – looking for a recipe for ice cream w/out eggs. Anyway, I made your recipe and it turned out AMAZING! Best mint chocolate ice cream I ever had. However, the ziploc bag method did not work – at all. After seeing how frustrated I was, my husband suggested I just pour the mixture into a big glass (pyrex) bowl and put it in the freezer – which I did. I stirred it often, about every 30-45 minutes, adding a bit of the chocolate ribbons each time. After about two hours it was almost set and I went to bed. When I awoke in the morning, I stirred it one more time and it was perfect! And yes, I did have ice cream for breakfast.
The mint flavor was really nice – I used store bought fresh mint, even though I grow my own. The store bought has a slightly milder and sweeter flavor than mine – which is more like wintergreen. I steeped the mint in the cream for a very long time – much longer than your recipe called for (mostly because I got distracted doing something else). Anyway, everything turned out great. It was so good, I have to make sure I have someone else to help me eat it before I make it again or I’ll eat the whole batch by myself!
I am so glad that you liked it. I love that mint chocolate chip recipe. I have never tried that method for making ice cream but I bet that my kids would love it.
Do you put the ice cream back in the freezer in that glass dish? I usually put my ice cream in round tupperware and scoop it out like store bought ice cream. Would the tupperware work with the layering of the chocolate? Have you ever tried adding melted chocolate to the ice cream maker at the very end? Would that work? Can’t wait to make this. Looks delicious. What a great blog!
I put the glass dish in the freezer. I could ass the chocolate to the machine, but I like to do it this way. This ice cream is delicious!
This was delish, real mint has a different flavor than extract, it tastes like, well, mint! My husband still liked it though. And I may have used crushed thin mints instead of chocolate this time, maybe.
it is very different. People are very opinionated about mint choc chip ice cream. Thin Mints would be bomb.
This recipe looks wonderful! I’ve been hunting around the internet for the perfect mint chocolate chip ice cream recipe and I believe that I have found it! That you so much for offering a variation to the custard base recipe that seemed to be the only one I could find… I cannot WAIT to try it!
Jacquie
I never use a custard base. The raw eggs weird me out.
Question for you on this mint ice cream recipe. I’d like to use my ice cream maker to freeze it which is 4 quarts. I’ll probably just triple the recipe to be safe but does this mean I should triple the quantity for mint leaves I steep in the cream?
Thanks!
Jeff
Yes, I would triple the mint too. I want a strong mint flavor.
Mint Chocolate chip icecream is one of my favourites!
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Me too. Love fresh mint the best.
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