I feel a bit like the character Vianne from the movie Chocolat, since I’ve been writing so much about chocolate during Lent (she opens her shop in the middle of it). Apologies, to anyone who has given it up, but it’s what I’m working on at the moment!
I thought it might be a good thing to give a few points on making chocolate chips, in case you wish to make your own for your ice cream.
Here are a few options:
1. The easiest way is to chop one of your favourite chocolate bars into pieces sized to suit your tastes.
2. A second way, if you like finer pieces is to take a chocolate bar and use a vegetable peeler or grater to create chocolate shards.
3. What I’ve been doing recently (photos), is to take some tempered chocolate, spread a thin layer on baking parchment, and then cut it into chunks. It seems to work quite well as long as you cut the chocolate as soon as it has set, but before it hardens fully. After you’ve cut it, let it harden fully, then remove from the parchment.
Note: If you find the chocolate too brittle in the ice cream, you can either use a chocolate with more fat (more toward milk and less toward dark) or add a bit of grape seed oil (5% or so of volume) while you are melting it.
i loe chocolate and this blog was great, pictures also, feeling hungry now
Great post! I like the idea of spreading chocolate on parchment. At the moment I’m using dark chocolate chips from O’Connails and some Callebaut dark choc chips, but this is a nice way to control the size and shape of choc too for some things!