I Scream for Ice Cream!

I am by no means an expert in making ice cream, but I have started exploring ever since I got a CuisineArt ice cream maker.  To date I have made matcha green tea ice cream, lychee ice cream, black sesame ice cream, and mangosteen ice cream.  See a pattern there?  Yes, I have been quite partial to making "Asian-flavored" ice cream... until now!  I decided to make a good old-fashioned chocolate chip vanilla ice cream.

Ingredients:

- 2 cups heavy cream
- 2 cups whole milk
- 4 egg yolks
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1.5 cup chocolate chip (semi-sweet chocolate chips and/or unsweetened baking chocolate)

Method:
 
1) Combine 4 egg yolks with 1/2 cup sugar and 1 cup whole milk in a bowl.  Set up a double boiler and heat the egg mixture until you achieve a custard consistency.  Mix frequently to avoid clumping, and don't heat at too high of heat!  You may choose to strain the custard afterwards to remove any clumps.

Separating egg yolks

Making custard in a double boiler

2) Cool the custard in the refrigerator or put the bowl in an ice bath to bring the custard to room temp or cooler.  Add your milk, heavy cream, remainder of the sugar, vanilla, and salt to the cooled custard mixture.  Mix well.

Mixing the custard with the remainder of the ingredients

3) Add the mixture to your ice cream maker.  Depending on what kind of ice cream maker you have, you may have to chill/freeze the inner bowl the night before.

Adding the mixture to a pre-chilled ice cream maker

4) Towards the end of the churning cycle (as your ice cream reaches a soft-serve consistency), add in the chocolate chips gradually until it is well blended into your ice cream.

Mixing in the chips

I was very happy with the flavor and consistency of my ice cream!

Final product

And of course, hind sight is 20/20. Here are some ways I will try to improve upon my ice cream in the future:
- reduce the amount of chocolate chip used
- there was too much crunch-to-cream ratio (because of too much chocolate)
- chop chocolate chips more to smaller pieces to reduce strain on your jaw as you chew on the chips

Give the recipe a try, and shoot me a message or comment below with any feedback!! Do post any success stories, and share your pictures with me :)