Chocolate & Peanut Butter Ice Cream

Simple question: What's your favorite dessert?  Are you a cake person?  Perhaps a sinful chocolate dessert person?  What about cheesecake?  Want to know what mine is?!  Take a guess....

ICE CREAM!  I love all the other stuff too but nothing compares to a good bowl (or cone) filled with ice cream!  It's one of those desserts where no matter how incredibly full I am, there is always room for ice cream!  I have this theory that when you eat ice cream on a full stomach, it melts in your body and sort of seeps through the cracks!  Pretty dumb, I know, but it's how I get by!

What about homemade ice cream?  Have you ever had it?  Made it?  That takes me back (waaayyy back) to my childhood years of making ice cream with my parents.  It seemed like it took forever and it was good, but still didn't compare to the stuff you'd buy in the store.  Ice cream makers have come a long way in twenty plus years - they're not big and bulky; in fact, they fit right onto your counter or even in a cupboard.  They only take 25 minutes to make the ice cream and the deliciousness that comes out is just that: delicious!  It's creamy and smooth and velvety...almost like a frozen mousse or custard.  It is SO good! 

How good is it?!  It's so good that I don't think I'll ever go out for ice cream again!  Well, that's probably not true, but if I have homemade ice cream at home, why would I go out?  This stuff puts the store-bought and the Dairy Queens, the Baskin Robbins' and whoever else out there to shame!  No joke.

So I made the chocolate and peanut butter ice cream from Annie's blog.  Both Chris and I were craving chocolate ice cream and with peanut butter mixed in?  Too good!  Annie actually got the recipe from David Lebovitz's book: The Perfect Scoop.  Apparently, in the blogging (and ice cream making community), he's the one to follow.  So, this book is definitely on my list to get!  The flavors were so good together; like a creamy, melted peanut butter cup!  The only thing I would change next time is using less peanut butter and more chocolate.  The peanut butter flavor, for me, was a little overpowering and I would've loved to have it toned down a bit and taste more of the chocolate.  All in all, it was still very good and super simple to make too!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream

Ingredients
2 cups Heavy Whipping Cream
1/4 cup Unsweetened Dutch-process Cocoa Powder
1/2 cup Sugar
Pinch of Salt
1/2 cup Peanut Butter

Directions
In a medium saucepan, add together the cream, cocoa powder, sugar and salt.  Bring to rolling bowl over med-high heat, stirring frequently.  As the mixture begins to foam up, remove from heat.  Carefully stir in the peanut butter and mix until melted into the mixture.

Place the mixture into a resealable container and chill thoroughly, in the refrigerator.  When ready, pour the mixture into your ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer's directions.


Yield: 2 Servings
Source: Adapted from Annie's Eats, originally adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz