We Should Cocoa: Chocolate Ice Cream Tacos

This month's We Should Cocoa is hosted by Choclette who has given us the summery challenge of ice cream. Last month's mint round up can be found here. You can read all about We Should Cocoa here and don't forget to check out Choclette and Chele's blogs.

My desk calendar provides me with zen like pearls of wisdom everyday. Sri Swami Satchidananda, Buddha, Ghandi et al urge me to be soft in my practice, that man cannot be polished without pressure and not to follow in people's footsteps but rather to seek what they seek in my own unique way.

Which lead me to think "If I had a pearl of wisdom to bestow on someone, what would it be?"

I could take inspiration from my favourite quote on Pinterest. (N.B - bit sweary).

It could be practical like how to season a wok or how to successfully make a meringue or even how to get candle wax out of a table cloth.

It could be profound. It could be life changing. It could inspire you to do great and wonderful things.

But I think I'm going to go with:-

"Please, for the love of all that is holy, DO NOT look at pictures of ice cream on the internet at 7.34pm on a boiling hot train."

You bring yourself into a world of pain. Your stomach will rumble. You'll look down at your tepid bottle of Diet Coke and think "Useless. Only an ice cream will make me feel better in this weather now". And then you will scowl until you get home when a faux Magnum just will not make things right.

It's pretty obvious how I know this.

Of all the delicious iced beauties that I saw on my ice cream viewing bender, the chocolate taco stuck with me. With no hope of buying one in the UK, I set about recreating it.

I made the waffle tacos using this waffle cone maker and the recipe included. I halved the recipe and ended up with so much batter let over. I haven't perfected small batch cones so I'll work on that one for you.

Here is the recipe for the amaretto and chocolate ice cream I made:

Ingredients

2 egg yolks
50gr caster sugar
1/2 tsp cornflour
1/2tsp vanilla extract
150ml semi skimmed milk
200ml double cream
1 tablespoon of ameretto
50gr chopped dark chocolate

Method

1, Whisk the egg yolks, caster sugar, cornflour and vanilla extract together until fully combined.
2, Bring the milk and 150ml of the double cream to just below simmering point and pour slowly onto the beaten egg etc using a whisk to combine.
3, Pour back into the saucepan and set over a low heat. Stir continuously until the custard has thickened and you get a nice thick covering on the back of a wooden spoon. Do not allow to boil as this will give you lumps.
4, Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly. Pour in the rest of the double cream and stir through the chopped dark chocolate and ameretto. The residual heat from the custard will melt the chocolate giving you a smooth chocolatey custard base. Let this go completely cold before churning in an ice cream machine as per your machines instructions.

This will fill about three ice cream tacos with three small scoops. Top with melted chocolate and nuts, because an untopped taco is an unloved taco.