Chocolate Truffle Ice-Cream

I go weak in the knees for magazines with images of hot, sexy, totally delicious food. Forget the carefully crafted recipe lead-ins that proclaim the sweet, sour or even piquant flavours of a particular dish; it’s the food photographs which sell it to me every time.

A perfect example would be June’s issue of bon appétit which proclaims that this chocolate ice-cream is so rich, it doesn’t melt-it just gets truffley.

Captivating.

But by itself not enough to rouse me. Then my eyes fall on the picture seen here.

Be still my heart, I all but leap over myself in my haste to exhume the ice-cream maker from the netherworld of the deepest, darkest, corner of my kitchen cupboard.

Forget the fact that I have long ago thrown out fiddly, egg-based custards in favour of the quicker and (happily for me) idiot proof, cornstarch, ice-cream base. Bon appétit's minimalist image of chocolate ice-cream has somehow elevated the word 'truffley' from poetic hyperbole to a thing with visceral appeal. Okay so I wanted to lick the page and I readily admit that I drooled a little too.

Completely possessed by that image, I convince myself that standing in a kitchen located some 11 degrees north of the equator on a day that thermostat registers 36°C is quite rightly a sane and sensible thing to do.

 It is not.

I  should have my head examined.

Slowly and patiently chocolate is melted, custard is stirred  and sugar syrup reduces to amber. These three are swirled into a frothy, chocolate slurry which must now be chilled for two days before processing it in the ice-cream maker.  Bon appétit advises that you freeze your ice-cream for three days before eating.

Seriously! Good luck with that.

What happened was that I cooled the custard in an ice-bath in my kitchen sink before putting it into the fridge. By the time I was finished cleaning the kitchen and making lunch it was ready for the ice-cream maker.

Be warned this recipe is time consuming so plan accordingly. In the end though you will be rewarded with a wicked good ice-cream with a chocolate flavour so intense it's just shy of bitter. If you are not a fan of dark chocolate, then this might not be for you.