Chocolate ice cream sandwich

Chocolate ice cream sandwich, originally uploaded by jessicafm.

Um, YUM?!

For David's first birthday party, I made a couple of ice creams from David Lebovitz's, The Perfect Scoop: Cinnamon and Philadelphia Style Chocolate. In an unprecedented move, I served up all the cinnamon ice cream at the party without taking photographs! The cinnamon ice cream went lickity-split, as we were also serving apple pie and you know that combination couldn't be beat. The chocolate ice cream was very good, as well, but it was not completely finished by the end of the party.

Tonight I decided that I needed to make an ice cream sandwich with the chocolate ice cream and a couple of Safeway's "chewy chocolate" cookies. The cookies are actually cocoa meringues with walnuts. While the photo is enticing and the flavors individually delicious, the combo didn't quite work. The cookies tasted much sweeter than the ice cream and they were too crispy to really work well. But it had to be done. ;-)

Now, in case you'd like to make the ice cream, here's the recipe. I highly recommend it! For this batch I used Scharfenberger cocoa powder and Ghiradelli unsweetened chocolate.

Chocolate Ice Cream, Philadelphia Style
2-1/4 cups heavy cream
6 tb unsweetened dutch-process cocoa powder
1 c sugar
pinch of salt
6 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 c whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Whisk together the cream, cocoa powder, sugar and salt in a large saucepan. Heat the mixture, whisking frequently, until it comes to a full, roiling boil (it will start to foam up). Remove from the heat and whisk in the chocolate until it's completely melted, then whisk in the milk and vanilla. Pour the mixture into a blender and blend for 30 seconds, until very smooth.

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator and then freeze it in your ice cream maer according to the manufacturer's instructions.