Week Seven: Chocolate

Last week, I considered making two different versions of the same ice cream, following the differences between two of the Gunter’s confectioners. That’s what I’m doing here, with chocolate. In a possibly heretical statement, I don’t really like chocolate. It’s fine but there are flavours I much prefer, and after a while I wish I were eating something else. So, three different chocolate ice creams was rather a lot for me!

Sometimes, the Gunter’s confectioners broadly agree; sometimes only one or two of them have a recipe for a certain flavour - Nutt used a lot of fruits the others didn’t but had no vanilla recipe, for example. Chocolate is one of the flavours where they all had a recipe but they were all wildly different. The most interesting difference is, it seems as though Jarrin and Jeanes used a different version of chocolate to Nutt. Both of them referred to dissolving chocolate in water, unlike Nutt who simply takes chocolate and ‘warms’ it. (Nutt also uses a lot less chocolate.) It sounds to me like Jarrin and Jeanes are using something closer to cocoa powder, which is a little surprising from Jarrin as cocoa powder isn't a thing until 1828. Chocolate as Nutt would have known it isn’t easy to find now, but I used 90% cocoa chocolate bars as the closest approximation. (Chocolate as we know it, nicely in bar form already mixed with milk and sugar, is much more modern; the first chocolate bar is from 1847, but you don’t get milk chocolate until 1876.) Also note that Nutt and Jarrin used chocolate in a custard base, Jeanes in a cream base. Jarrin and Jeanes include water via the powder dissolving, after some experimentation I found I needed about 145g of water to dissolve about 113g of cocoa powder, but for recipe formulation reasons I ended up using a lot more than this otherwise the ice cream didn’t have enough water and just crumbled. Nutt adds water via the use of syrup rather than sugar, although I found the syrup needed to be weighted to the sugar rather than a 50/50 split otherwise there was too much water.

So we’ve got three different versions of chocolate ice cream to test: chocolate in a custard base, cocoa powder in a custard base and cocoa powder in a cream base. (Not one of them used chocolate in a cream base.) 

Nutt’s chocolate ice cream: chocolate in a custard base

Ingredients

(As always, the percentages mean you can make as much as you like; I made 1000g of each version.)

516.3g single (19% butterfat) cream (51.63%)

104.8g whipping (39.5% butterfat) cream (10.48%)

96.7g egg yolks (9.67%)

236.4g ‘syrup’ that is 85% sugar and 15% water (23.64%) (This comes to 200.94g sugar and 35.64g water; you can just add these into the pan as separate components, I call it syrup to make myself feel happier about sticking to the recipe)

45.8g 90% cocoa chocolate (4.58%)

Method

(As usual, I use a stand mixer with the balloon whisk, and a handheld balloon whisk for the parts on the heat.)

1. Put the creams, syrup, egg yolks and chocolate broken into small pieces into a pan. 

2. Heat until the chocolate has completely melted and a custard has formed, whisking constantly; when you can draw a line in the mixture on the back of a spoon, this has happened. 

(From the chestnut ice cream week; it actually looked much the same...)

3. Pass through a sieve, then chill for several hours, preferably overnight. For best food safety, use an ice bath to rapidly cool to 20C before putting it in the fridge.

4. Rewhisk just prior to churning.

5. Churn according to your machine’s instructions, stopping when the ice cream resembles soft serve.

6. To fully harden, put ice cream into a container and then place in freeze for at least four hours, preferably longer.

Jarrin’s chocolate ice cream: cocoa powder in a custard base

Ingredients

325.5g whipping (39.5% butterfat) cream (32.55%)

22.6g double (50.5% butterfat) cream (2.26%) (This is the first time I’ve needed double cream! Even only using whipping cream couldn’t get a high enough fat percentage, but it comes close; if you’re somewhere where access to 50% butterfat cream isn’t available, use the 39.5% instead)

72.3g egg yolk (7.23%)

210.2g caster sugar (21.02%)

301.1g water (30.11%)

68.3g cocoa powder (6.83%) (Use a ‘100% cocoa’ cocoa powder, without added sugar) 

Method

1. Put the cocoa powder and water in a pan, heating and whisking it until the cocoa powder has fully dissolved.

2. Rapidly add the creams, egg yolks and sugar.

3. Keep whisking constantly until a custard is formed - when you can draw a line in the mixture on the back of a spoon.

4. Sieve the mixture and then chill for several hours, preferably overnight; for best food safety, use an ice bath to rapidly chill to 20C before putting mixture in the fridge.

5. Rewhisk just prior to churning. 

6. Churn according to your machine’s instructions, stopping when the ice cream resembles soft serve. 

7. Put ice cream into a container and place in freezer to harden for at least four hours, preferably overnight.

Jeanes’s chocolate ice cream: cocoa powder in a cream base

Ingredients 

365.9g double (50.5% butterfat) cream (36.59%) (You need double cream for this, if you can’t get cream at this high percentage this recipe isn’t for you; even double cream doesn’t quite achieve the levels of butterfat generally used in a Pineapple Encore recipe, it’s lower by about 1%)

201.4g caster sugar (20.14%)

360.9g water (36.09%)

71.8g cocoa powder (7.18%) (Again, use a ‘100% cocoa’ cocoa powder)

Method

1. Put the cocoa powder and water in a pan, heating and whisking until the cocoa powder has fully dissolved.

2. Add the cream and sugar, and whisk until it’s all fully combined.

3. Sieve the mixture and then chill it for several hours, preferably overnight; for best food safety, use an ice bath to rapidly chill to 20C before putting it into the fridge.

4. Rewhisk just prior to churning. 

5. Churn according to your machine’s instructions, stopping when it’s a soft serve texture.

6. Place in a container and freeze for at least four hours, preferably overnight.

And that is all three, very different Gunter’s chocolate ice creams. Each recipe produced a good textured ice cream, which was pleasing because chocolate can be surprisingly difficult to achieve. All were very chocolate-y; personally, I favoured Nutt’s recipe because it was the least intense of them all and as I said earlier, I’m not a huge chocolate fan. I’ve taken them into work now though, so I can get other people to add their opinions, and I’ll post a short update next week. Jeanes’s recipe is the easiest, although only an option if you can get very high fat cream.  Overall, I would say Gunter’s chocolate ice cream is a success.