Homemade Coffee Ice Cream and Dark Chocolate Sauce

You will also need:

1. A coffee grinder for coarsely cracking the coffee beans or a plastic bag with a mallet or hammer.
2. A medium-sized, heavy-bottomed saucepan.
3. A strainer lined with 1 or 2 thicknesses of cheesecloth.
4. A large bowl
5. An ice cream maker.
6. A small, heavy-bottomed saucepan.

For the ice cream:

1. Coarsely crack the coffee beans by placing them in a coffee grinder and quickly turning the machine on and off several times. Alternately, the beans may be placed in a plastic bag and crushed with a mallet or hammer.
2. Put the milk, the sugar and the cracked coffee beans in the medium-sized saucepan and heat them together over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved. Remove the pot from the burner and let the coffee beans steep in the sweet milk for 1 hour.
3. Place the strainer lined with cheesecloth over the bowl and pour the coffee-flavored milk through the strainer to remove the coffee beans. Bring up the edges of the cheesecloth and squeeze as much of the remaining liquid out of the beans into the bowl as possible Discard the beans and cheesecloth.
4. Into the bowl of coffee milk, add the heavy cream, the vanilla extract, 1/2 teaspoon of finely ground coffee and a dash of salt. Cover the bowl and chill the mixture in the refrigerator until it is cold. Then make the ice cream in an ice cream maker, according to the directions for your machine.
5. A suggestion for storing: Homemade ice cream stores well in a glass container, with a sheet of plastic wrap or parchment paper pressed close to its surface to help prevent the formation of ice crystals.

For the dark chocolate sauce:

Note: This is the dark chocolate sauce used in another diplomatickitchen recipe here on TastyKitchen: Soft Chocolate Cake in a Beggar’s Purse. It is repeated here for convenient reference.

1. Add the chopped chocolate, milk and cream into the small saucepan and melt the chocolate over low heat, stirring often.

2. Once the chocolate is melted add the frozen butter, a few pieces at a time.

3. Add the vanilla, remove the pan from the heat and set the sauce aside until you are ready to put the desserts together. Reheat the sauce briefly before using it and thin it with a little more milk if you prefer a slightly thinner sauce with ice cream. Any leftover sauce keeps well refrigerated for many weeks.

Serving suggestion:

1. For 8 desserts, place 16 scoops of ice cream on a baking pan lined with parchment and set the pan in the freezer. By forming the ice cream into balls several hours in advance, putting the desserts together is quicker and the ice cream is not liable to melt before it is served.
2. In tall-sided clear glasses, place a spoonful of chocolate sauce, then a scoop of ice cream, another spoonful of sauce, a second scoop of ice cream, and finally, more chocolate sauce. A small branch of fresh mint is a pretty decoration.

An acknowledgement: The dark chocolate sauce recipe is adapted from one in “The Dione Lucas Book of French Cooking ” (1973).