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It’s a hard decision of which is my favorite classic ice cream flavor, cookies and cream, coffee, or mint chocolate chip. I think it would all come down to what day you happened to ask me. But any of those 3 would be the choice. Over the years, I have experimented with making my own mint chocolate chip ice cream, but I was never a fan of large hard chunks of chocolate in my ice cream. Especially if it happened to be lower quality chocolate chips. This recipe, uses dark chocolate ganache instead of full chocolate chips. It is one more small step, but it turns the chocolate into delicate chocolate flakes, that I think make it so no others compare.

I grew up making home made ice cream. I’m serious. As a kid, all us cousins would take turns churning the crank until our arms ached. We put ground cinnamon on the freshly spun ice cream. Nothing tastes better.

Action shot of my middle child taking her turn cranking the ice cream.

Equipment:

I use the KitchenAid ice cream attachment. I’m not into kitchen gadgets. I like to own as little as possible and this simple piece of equipment just sleeps in the freezer when not in use. I would highly recommend it for a low buy in that offers years and years of use.

If I could magically make a change to it, it would be that it could last through more than 1 recipe. What I’ve noticed, is that sometimes it gets a little tripped up if you don’t add your ingredients as quick as possible. If it gets stuck- you won’t be able to make it better. It’ll be locked/froze in place and the blade won’t spin. By time you get it washed out, it won’t be cold enough to freeze your ice cream anymore.

However, that’s 1 problem. The fix is to have your recipe mise en place and you’ll be golden. It’s a non issue when you know how to manage it.

Ice Cream Base:

I’ve shared my homemade vanilla ice cream recipe on my instagram in the past. I use this base recipe for nearly all my ice cream recipes. I’ll be sharing more soon. I’m also working on gelato right now.

This recipe is so simple and made with real food- we never buy ice cream at the store.

Ingredients:

Heavy cream

Milk

Sugar (I use raw sugar, although maple syrup also works really well here)

Salt (if you forget this it’ll lack flavor)

Vanilla

Mint Extract (I use both, you don’t have to)

Chocolate ganache

How do I make ganache?

Ganache is simply, melted chocolate paired with some kind of fat. Classically, ganache would be made by heating cream and pouring it over equal parts of quality chocolate. Stir until smooth. It sounds fancy, but actually it’s terribly simple to make.

Chocolate Quality,

Technically, you can use any chocolate. However chocolate chips contain stabilizers. There stabilizers give the chocolate chip their perfect form. Because of this, chocolate chips tend to not melt very well. For this recipe, they will work. However, if you plan to perfect your homemade ganache, you’re going to want to invest in some quality chocolate bars.

For a full recipe of perfect homemade chocolate ganache, look here.

Homemade Magic Shell,

Remember that ice cream topping that you could pour the oily chocolate across your bowl of ice cream and it would harden? Was there anything better than that in the 90s?

It’s original ingredients are: Sugar, Sunflower Oil, Coconut Oil, Cocoa, Chocolate, Contains 2% Or Less Of: Cocoa Processed With Alkali, Soy Lecithin, Milk, Salt, Vanilla.

Essentially, it’s ganache.

Chocolate + fat.

You can create this very same goodness from home with just some chocolate and a little bit of fat. I use anything from coconut oil, butter, to heavy cream.

* Realize butter and coconut oil are saturated fats- meaning they are soldi at room temperature. This is not the case with heavy cream and the process would be a bit different. Now, true ganache would be heating cream- then slowly adding in the chopped chocolate and let the cream melt the chocolate down. You can defiantly do this.

Don’t overcomplicate it. A handful of chopped chocolate and a couple tablespoons of fat = done!

Onto the recipe…