We Should Cocoa: Marzipan, Chocolate and Cherry Ice Cream

This month’s We Should Cocoa is being hosted by Choclette over at Chocolate Log Blog.  You can see the round up of the Lime round up here.  This month’s ingredient we have to incorporate is marzipan.  

There is nothing like your home county bathed in sunshine.  The best friend and I headed to the seaside (mainly to play crazy golf, which she beat me at, and play on the 2p machines).  We sat right on the shoreline, occasionally scooting backwards if we saw a big wave which threatened nothing but wet bums and wet handbags.  We headed back home just after lunch and rallied the troops to the nearest beer garden where we sunned our faces and drank ginger beer. 

Sitting back in those garden chairs, eyes closed with the sun gently beating down on our cheeks reminded me of when Jim and I went to Rome on an impulse.  We sat in the Vatican City and just soaked it all in.  The history, the romance, the strange behaviour of some tourists.  But secretly, we were just using the time to digest a huge Italian bistro meal and a copious amount of marzipan, cherry and chocolate ice cream…

I don’t own an ice-cream maker and even though I have my eye on one, I wanted to make this ice-cream.  I remembered that Chele over at the Chocolate Teapot had made a no-churn ice cream and had bookmarked it to do at some point.  Now is the perfect time to break it out despite it being cloudy and grey!  I’ll work on that bikini body later…

Recipe from BBC Good Food

Ingredients

600ml double cream

½ a 397gr can of condensed milk

Couple of drops of almond essence

50gr to 100gr marzipan (according to taste, more the merrier in my opinion…) chopped

100gr cherries (fresh or canned, I used canned… Shh…), chopped

100gr good quality dark chocolate, chopped

Method

1, Beat the cream, condensed milk and almond essence together until it comes to the consistency of thick clotted cream, this doesn’t take long so keep an eye on it to make sure you don’t overbeat it

2, Gently fold in the chopped cherries, marzipan and dark chocolate.

3, Line a loaf tin with greaseproof paper and add in your very soon to be ice-cream. 

4, I gave mine a couple of sharp taps on the work surface to remove any air bubbles and gently cover with some more greaseproof paper

5, Freeze until solid and then it is ready to enjoy.