For dessert last night, we ate what Tony called my best frozen dessert ever(!): Vanilla Fudge Coconut-Milk Ice Cream. I thought it was pretty great, too. 😄
I was inspired to make a vanilla fudge–flavored frozen dessert because my buddy Jack had sent me—via snail mail, because he's old-school that way—the paper version of this interview (subscription required) in The Wall Street Journal with Jeni Britton Bauer, one of my frozen dessert idols, that included Bauer's recipe for Hot Fudge. The sauce is quite simple—only four ingredients, including boiling water—and dairy-free. If you want me to email you the full recipe, please ask and I will do that.
I used Enjoy Life Semi-Sweet Chocolate Mini Chips in lieu of the finely chopped bittersweet chocolate listed in the recipe. I was hoping the chips would be small enough, unchopped, that they'd melt easily into the other ingredients—cocoa and sugar—after adding the boiling water. They didn't quite get softened enough, so I ended up heating the mixture on low for a couple minutes until everything could be incorporated into a smooth and luscious sauce. Next time I make this ice cream, I'll have to use bittersweet chocolate, so we can have an even darker and richer fudge experience.
For a change of pace, I was in the mood for a frozen dessert made from canned coconut milk. (As I wrote in my second post on this blog, I enjoy CM-based ice creams now and again but am not always in the mood for the pronounced note of coconut that's inevitably present in these desserts. I like, but don't 100% love, that coconut flavor.) I used this recipe from The Kitchn for my vanilla base. I'd never encountered a CMIC recipe that called for cooking the base, so I had to give this one a try.
The time on the stove—and the arrowroot thickener—resulted in a superior texture and mouthfeel compared with other CMICs I've made.
I layered the semisolid ice cream in a container with drizzles of almost completely cooled hot sauce late yesterday morning, ...
... and our dessert was completely frozen by dinnertime. Tony and I both went back for a second serving.
