Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Mint chocolate chip is Dustin's favorite ice cream flavor, so it's something I've had on my to-make list ever since we procured our very own ice cream maker. I finally got around to making it and am very glad that I did.

I toyed around with using fresh mint like I did with my mint chocolate chip cookies, but after some research I discovered that using fresh mint leaves a heavy and distinct woody/herby flavor to the ice cream that I actually wanted in the cookies and found to be quite delicate if that makes any sense. For this ice cream, however, I wanted traditional mint chocolate chip like you get from the ice cream shop or the pints from Blue Bell, so I stuck with a version from My Kitchen Addiction using the "fake" peppermint extract.

I first made the standard ice cream custard base with heavy cream, milk, egg yolks, sugar and salt then let it cool before adding 2 1/2 teaspoons of mint extract (1 1/2 was just not enough mint flavor for me, but my increase made it the perfect amount of mintiness for us) and a few drops of green food coloring until the custard was the perfect minty shade of green. I let the custard sit in the fridge overnight before churning because that really does make the final product taste so much better (even though the waiting stinks). I added a bar of Trader Joe's Swiss Dark Chocolate to the custard for the last five minutes of the churning. The dark chocolate chunks added great texture and flavor to the smooth minty ice cream.

I definitely think I could get used to snacking on fresh homemade ice cream each summer. If only I had discovered this when I lived in Texas where I could partake in this more often.