Spicy Chocolate Ice Cream (that's actually spicy)

This spicy chocolate ice cream is a tightrope walk between cold and hot, spicy and sweet, refined and whimsical. And it doesn’t fall off.

When it comes to spicy desserts, I actually can’t say I’m the biggest fan. But when a birthday boy asks you to make him a spicy dark chocolate ice cream, you roll up your sleeves, put on your big boy boxers, and add two and a half tablespoons of cayenne powder into a perfectly unassuming chocolate ice cream. Yes, really. That much cayenne.

You might be wondering why you need to empty your entire little container of cayenne powder to make this. It sounds like a ludicrous amount, right? Like the devil’s work. 

Well, the thing is, dairy is a common remedy to too-spicy food. It has to do with the fat molecules in dairy coating the capsaicin… or something. Just the other day, in fact, I was watching a video of people trying increasingly spicy foods, and they all had tall glasses of milk on standby to help quell the raging flames in their mouths.

In other words, in order to make spicy chocolate ice cream that is actually, legitimately spicy, you need a LOT of spice. Like, an ungodly amount. When you see the amount of cayenne this recipe calls for, just know that, yep, you read that right.

For someone who normally doesn’t go for spicy desserts, I was impressed by this one. The birthday boy was happy, and someone else even said it was the best ice cream I’ve made. I’m still beaming from the compliment. Or maybe I’m just smiling through the pain of eating this ice cream… just kidding. It’s not that bad.

This ice cream does have heat, but it isn’t blow-your-head-off-spicy unless you’re extremely sensitive to spicy food. It’s a medium amount. The heat is front and center—definitely not a back note or aftertaste or subtle twist—but as a self-proclaimed spice wimp, I was still able to tolerate it. The dark chocolate and cayenne play nice with each other, and cinnamon and chili powder help round out the flavors overall, making for an ice cream experience adjacent to Mexican hot chocolate.

Included in the recipe is shards of dark chocolate stracciatella to help add sweet chocolate flavor and textural variation. It’s optional, but I highly recommend it. I tried adding chili crisp to melted chocolate to use as stracciatella, but after the birthday boy tried it, he decided against it. The flavors just didn’t go well with chili powder and cayenne. I ended up using plain dark chocolate with a small amount of flavorless coconut oil.

Anyways, this spicy chocolate ice cream is derived from Dana Cree’s Blue Ribbon Chocolate Ice Cream, a recipe from her book Hello My Name is Ice Cream. It involves melting dark chocolate into the base, but I didn’t follow her directions to a T, so I found that the chocolate didn’t melt well and left behind lots of unmelted bits after straining. To amend this, I added the strained chocolate with a bit of the base into a blender, gave it a whirl for just a few seconds, and strained it back into the rest of the base. Everything went through the sieve after blending. Worked like a charm.

Try something a little spicier than a PSL this spooky autumn season. It’s a trick and a treat all in one. Happy Halloween! 

INGREDIENTS

20 g cocoa powder (3 tablespoons)

3.08 g salt (1/2 teaspoon)

150 g sugar (3/4 cup)

1.23 g xanthan gum (1/4 teaspoon)

1 tablespoon chili powder

2 ½ tablespoons cayenne powder (use more or less according to personal preference, tasting as you go)

2 small shakes of cinnamon (about ¼ tsp)

50 g invert sugar syrup (1/4 cup)

450 g milk (2 ¼ cups)

150 g dark chocolate (6 oz)

160 g heavy cream (3/4 cup)

1 bar of good-quality dark chocolate and some flavorless coconut oil for stracciatella, optional

DIRECTIONS

1.       Mix together cocoa powder, salt, sugar, xanthan gum, chili powder, cayenne powder, and cinnamon in a saucepan. Once the dry ingredients have been evenly mixed, add the invert sugar syrup, milk, and dark chocolate and turn the stove on medium.

2.       Cook the mixture, stirring with a spoon or whisk, until it feels like everything has melted and become homogenous. At this point, you can add more cayenne powder if you want a spicier ice cream, keeping in mind that the spice will be dulled a bit by the cream later.

3.       Strain the milk mixture into a container. You might have lots of chocolate pieces strained out—do not throw them away. Let it cool so that it’s still a little warm but not hot.

4.       If you have lots of chocolate pieces strained out, put them into a blender with a few glugs of the milk mixture that you just strained it from. Blend for a few seconds until the chocolate has broken down, then strain it back into the milk mixture. You shouldn’t have anything left behind this time, but if it happens again, repeat this step.

5.       Mix heavy cream into the milk mixture and leave to chill for several hours or overnight. Put an empty ice cream container into the freezer.

6.       The next day, churn your ice cream base according to your ice cream machine’s instructions.

7.       While ice cream is churning, melt the bar of dark chocolate with a small amount of flavorless coconut oil (I didn’t measure, but I’m guessing it was about ½ teaspoon) in the microwave. Stir the two ingredients together well and let cool slightly while ice cream is churning.

8.       When the ice cream looks like it’s almost done churning, stream the chocolate in a small stream into the ice cream to make thin shards of chocolate.

9.       Pack ice cream up into the empty ice cream container in the freezer and freeze for several hours until firm enough to scoop.

NOTES

Invert sugar/invert syrup is easy to make and helps keep your ice cream easy to scoop. I used the recipe from Hello My Name is Ice Cream, but any recipe for invert sugar/invert syrup should work just fine. It only requires sugar, water, and a weak acid such as citric acid, lemon juice, or vinegar.