Chocolate

I was an early trendsetter. I was snitching bites of raw cookie dough long before anyone else, way back in the sixties, so I would like to take credit for starting the craze. Okay, maybe I wasn’t the first kid to snitch a bit of raw cookie dough. But whoever came up with the idea for adding cookie dough to ice cream rightly deserves the accolades from ice cream lovers across the United States. (I’m not sure the idea of raw cookie dough in ice cream has international appeal.) This dough is packed with crunchy nuts and lots of chocolate chips, all embedded in a soft brown sugar dough. I debated with myself that this may be too much cookie dough for the average person to add to ice cream. Then, after much nibbling (while thinking about it), I decided that it was just not possible to have too much cookie dough!

White truffles are especially fun to fold into Chocolate Ice Cream (pages 26 and 28) for both color contrast and taste.

These truffles will stay slightly soft in frozen ice cream. You can make them smaller or larger than indicated.

Just about every gelateria in Italy features a bin of stracciatella, vanilla ice cream with chocolate “chips.” It results from a technique that clever Italians devised for pouring warm, melted chocolate into cold ice cream. The flow of chocolate immediately hardens into streaks, which get shredded (stracciato) into “chips” as the ice cream is stirred. The trick to stracciatella is to pour it into your ice cream maker in a very thin stream during the last moment of churning. If your aim isn’t very good, or your ice cream machine has a small opening, transfer the melted chocolate into a measuring cup with a pouring spout. (If you’re using a microwave to melt the chocolate, simply melt the chocolate in the measuring cup.) The trick is to pour it not on the turning dasher (mixing blade) but into the ice cream itself. You can also drizzle it over the ice cream as you layer it into the storage container, stirring it very slightly while you’re pouring.

If you like your brownies airy and not too dense, these are the ones for you.

These mint disks are adapted from a recipe passed on to me by Elizabeth Falkner, the owner of San Francisco’s deservedly popular Citizen Cake bakery. The mixture is simple to put together, and you can adjust the mint flavor to your liking. Taste a bit and add more if you wish, as mint extracts and oils vary. I make my Peppermint Patties very minty, which is especially important when they’re crumbled into deep, dark chocolate ice cream, a combination I call “The Girl Scout Cookie Effect.”

When I put this recipe on my web site, I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of comments and accolades. It seems I’m not the only one out there who craves toffee—especially this buttery-crisp candy enrobed in dark chocolate and showered with lots of toasted almonds. It’s very good folded into ice cream, and although the recipe makes a bit more than you’ll need, I don’t think you’ll have any problem finding something to do with the rest.

These easy-to-make peanuts will make you feel like a chocolatier assembling a world-class candy bar. If you’re anything like me, you can’t keep chocolate bars around the house without breaking off a hunk every time you pass by, so by all means double the recipe if you want, just to make sure there’s enough for folding into the ice cream later on.

This decadently thick sauce is perfect if you’re nostalgic for the incredibly thick hot fudge sauce served in old-fashioned ice cream parlors, many of which are disappearing. I was inspired to use airy marshmallows (which hopefully won’t be disappearing anytime soon) as a foundation by the sauce served at Edy’s, a well-loved ice cream fountain in Berkeley, California, that (sadly) no longer exists.Warning: This sauce is very, very thick!

The coffee craze shows no sign of slowing down. And fueled by all that caffeine, it probably never will. This sauce combines coffee and chocolate into mocha, named after an Arabian port famous for its coffee. Somewhere along the line, chocolate got added, and “mocha” nowadays means coffee fortified with a good dose of chocolate.

This sauce is easy to put together and is lovely served with any of the dark chocolate ice creams or sorbets in this book. I appreciate it for its creamy sweetness, and it rarely fails to impress. Be sure to use top-quality, real white chocolate, which is actually ivory colored, due to an abundance of pure cocoa butter.

This is my favorite all-purpose chocolate sauce. Although the name says lean, it tastes anything but. It’s a wonderful alternative to richer chocolate sauces spiked with cream or butter, and gets its flavor from lots of chocolate and cocoa powder (an important reason to use the best you can find). This sauce gets gloriously thicker the longer it sits, which I find makes a reasonable excuse for keeping a batch on hand in the refrigerator at all times.

This sauce is very rich and very thick. If you prefer your hot fudge on the sweeter side, this is the one for you.

A chef once asked me if all pastry chefs were crazy. To be honest, we do have that reputation, since many of us are indeed crazed perfectionists. If we get something in our minds, we’re not satisfied until it’s just right. When I imagined the perfect hot fudge sauce, I envisioned it being gooey, shiny, silky smooth, and full of deep, dark chocolate flavor. So I tinkered around until I came up with the perfect version of this sauce.

If you’re looking for a chocolate dessert that’s fudgy and festive without being fussy and filling, here it is. Using a top-quality cocoa powder and just the right amount of dark chocolate ensures that this granita will satisfy any and all chocolate lovers.

I once wanted to try my hand at making coconut milk and read that the best way to crack open a coconut is to mimic the way monkeys do it. So I went out to my driveway, lifted my coconut high above my head, and sent it crashing down to the pavement. Suddenly, I began to feel rather wet from my knees down, and I realized that the watery liquid had splashed everywhere, saturating my shoes and trousers. I suppose I should have followed those instructions more literally. Since monkeys don’t wear clothing, I probably should have removed mine first. So if you see a scantily clad man hurling coconuts around in your neighborhood, don’t call the police. It’s probably me preparing the ingredients for this really delicious sorbet, which combines two of my favorite flavors: dark, bittersweet chocolate and sweet coconut. On second thought, maybe I should just stick to store-bought coconut milk from now on.…

There are folks who can’t imagine dessert without chocolate, while others aren’t happy unless they get something with citrus. Sometimes I can’t decide which I feel like. Am I in the mood for something citrusy? Or am I having a chocolate craving that needs to be satisfied? Here’s a happy truce that marries the two flavors in perfect harmony and is guaranteed to please everyone.

I wouldn’t dream of visiting the vast Central Market in Florence without my friend Judy Witts, known throughout town as the Divina Cucina. With Judy as my guide, butchers and cheese merchants greet us like given-up-for-lost family members, and everywhere we turn another oversized platter appears, heaped with Tuscan delights: sheep’s-milk pecorino, candied fruits spiced with mustard seeds, fresh raspberries dotted with syrupy balsamic vinegar, and, gulp, juicy tripe sandwiches (which I haven’t built up the courage to try). And because we’re in Italy, it all ends with shots of grappa taken straight from little glass vials, obbligatorio after all that sampling. This sorbetto is adapted from Judy’s recipe. One of her favorite parts is the little chocolate “seeds” it contains. Since watermelons have a lot of water, take the sorbetto out of the freezer long enough ahead of serving to make it scoopable, 5 to 10 minutes. To pass the time, serve shots of grappa, and if there’s any left by serving time, splash some over the sorbetto too.

On my first visit to Torino, I arrived in rabid pursuit of gianduja, a confection made from local hazelnuts ground with milk chocolate that is a specialty of the Piedmont region. I’d also never had gianduja gelato at the source. I did not leave disappointed. I watched with anticipation as the gelato maker at Caffè San Carlo smeared dense gelato from his gleaming freezer into a cone. It was hazelnut heaven. Use top-quality milk chocolate with at least 30 percent cocoa solids.

Sometimes I’m afraid to admit that I love white chocolate. Purists argue, “It’s not real chocolate.” Although that may technically be true, who cares? (French fries aren’t “real chocolate” either…yet they’re pretty darn good.) So I don’t compare it to dark chocolate, since it’s a whole other ballgame. White chocolate’s creamy-smooth, delicate cocoa butter flavor is perfect when melted and stirred into ice cream, and the result makes a truly outstanding dessert when topped with Sour Cherries in Syrup (page 185). And I’ve yet to come across any chocolate cake that couldn’t be improved by a scoop of white chocolate ice cream melting seductively alongside.