How Many Doctoral Candidates Does It Take to Make Ice Cream?

I ask. Emma answers matter-of-fact-ly: Two. It seems she's right. In an unprecedented turn of events, I am blogging and photographing this adventure, but someone else (Emma!) is doing pretty much all of the work. She's also doing pretty much all of the singing. It is a humble tune, one I have dubbed "Churning," and it goes like this: churning-a-churning-churning-a-churning. It's cute.

My excitement is less lyrical but just as strong since I don't have a fancy stand-mixer (*sigh*) or its fancy ice cream-making attachment back home. Alas.

Chocolate Ice Cream

Adapted from Baked Bree.

1 cup cocoa powder

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 1/2 cups 2% milk

3 1/4 cups heavy cream

1 tbsp vanilla

6 handfuls of sea salt potato chips
2-3 cups of hot fudge

Put cocoa and brown sugar together in a bowl.

Add milk and cream and whisk until well combined.

Pour mix into your frozen ice-cream maker bowl and follow its instructions.

Voila! Ice cream!

Emma and I wanted fixin's (that apostrophe is substituting for the g, not a possessive marker - just to be clear) so we divided up the batch and mixed in chips and fudge during the ice cream's soft-serve phase. I wrote the amounts assuming you'd want to mix up the entire batch with chips and chocolate but use less if you're making less ice cream.

Notes

• I had a whole big, clever post written up and it went away. I don't know exactly where but now that it's gone I feel deflated and don't really want to re-write all of it. Le sigh.
• Feel free to use different things to mix in or no mix-ins at all. Chocolate chips, marshmellows, nuts, cookie pieces, cereal pieces, broccoli florets, whatever gets your boat to floating.
• It is crucial to use high-quality cocoa here. One of the main reasons Emma and I started experimenting with add-ins was because we used the Hershey's cocoa we had on hand and definitely tasted the low-quality bitterness. That said, the texture was great and it was incredibly easy so it's worth doing if you have the equipment.