We finished off the second batch tonight.
I am not a big Nutella person: it’s too sweet and too much sugar and fat before nuts. I like to roast and skin hazelnuts, Cuisinart them into a paste, add a little hazelnut oil and chocolate and call it good. I mean, go straight to the source of the flavors you want, right?
And then Nutella made its first try at ice cream and Costco was carrying their cones and I tried a box.
The cones stayed crunchy in the freezer. This is rare. The ice cream: as Sandra Boynton wrote in her Chocolate: the Consuming Passion, chocolate is everybody’s favorite but not in ice cream, where vanilla reigns by far. Therefore the fault is not in the chocolate, but in ice cream’s rendition of it. Truth!
Until now, when hazelnuts got in on the act. The Nutella cones were too sweet, and I’m not into too sweet–except those. They totally got to me.
But like so much at Costco, it was a temporary thing and then they were gone.
So I went looking. You guys, this was bad: I had to have that ice cream available. I’m not used to being a junk food junkie.
I found this. The amount of salt it called for was startling, though; I used half and it still came out like a salty caramel effect. So let me praise and borrow so I never lose this and link and sing this person’s praises and let me tell you the ice cream recipe we’ve made twice in ten days now and need to stay away from for awhile because I could eat way way way too much of it. And it’s not too sweet. One batch takes half a large Costco jar of Nutella. (Richard: “I’m not sure I needed to know that.”) Yes I’m already fantasizing about trying to create a homemade-nutella version, but in this, the commercial stuff justifies itself at last.
So here goes.
Nutella ice cream
Put two cups of heavy cream in a large bowl and put a strainer over it. (It will help cool your mixture in a few minutes.)
Whip 4 egg yolks with 1/2 c sugar till it’s light yellow.
Over the stove, whisk 3/4 c Nutella with 1 c. whole milk (I did a half cup nonfat with a half cup cream, gotta use up that Costco half gallon, right?) and heat till almost simmering. With the Kitchenaid beating away, ladle a bunch into the egg mixture to bring up its temperature, then pour that all back into the pan whisking away and cook the whole thing but don’t let it get to a boil at all. 177F, she says. Yeah something like that, said me.
Next, pour it into the cream with the sieve straining out any egg bits and add 2 tsp vanilla (Madagascar Bourbon vanilla goes best with chocolate) and 1/2 tsp salt.
Let it cool, and then there’s your ice cream mixture.
For our 45th anniversary Richard gave me an ice cream machine that freezes as well as churns and this amount is its limit. I can pour it in straight from room temperature and 30-40 minutes later we’re good.
This is what Nutella has been waiting to come to be all this time.