a spoonful of heaven

On Thanksgiving evening, while cruising websites for black Friday bargains, I found a great deal on an ice cream maker.  I ordered it, thinking it may be just the thing for Santa to leave under our tree since we'd talked about getting one last summer, but decided it was too pricey.

Some of the items I ordered from one particular website arrived on our doorstep in just the box/packaging you'd find the item in on a shelf at the store (as in, not in a plain brown shipping box).  Which, I guess is ok, but at Christmas time, it's not ideal to have gifts arrive that in no way have their identity concealed.  Ugh.  For some reason I thought Billy had seen the ice cream maker and sort of dissed it (yep, I just used the word dissed.)  He now claims that is not the case.  Anyway, he saw it in our dump room after Christmas, asked who it was for, and was thrilled when I explained that I ordered it for us him.

Sooooo, fast forward a couple of weeks - and we are in love.  LOVE.   Love this ice cream maker.  Worth every penny.  Home made ice cream is infinitely so much better than the stuff you buy at the store. The only downside is that we now want to make ice cream all. of. the. time.  Whipping cream is becoming one of the "staples" on our grocery list.  You know - bread, eggs, milk, cream.

Our new favorite recipe is for chocolate velvet ice cream. Seriously, this stuff is a spoonful of heaven.  Creamy, chocolate-y, wonderful goodness.  If you have an ice cream maker, run to the store and buy the ingredients.  Actually, the good news is, you probably already have everything on hand (unless you don't consider cream a staple).  After reading the reviews, I did modify the recipe a bit:  I used 2 cups (one carton) cream, and  2/3 cup 2% milk (cutting calories, right?!).  I also used dark chocolate cocoa and it produced a lovely, rich chocolate flavor (that didn't taste like dark chocolate), and omitted the chocolate chips because I wanted a smooth texture - though adding chips or other mix-ins would be yummy (but why mess with perfection?).

Project 365: 7

(Sorry, a food photographer I am not.  And my ice cream was getting melty while I tried to get a good pic).

Yum.