Mocha Ice Cream

I made some coffee ice cream a bit ago, I forget when. It was not too long before my fridge died. For some reason I didn't feel I needed to look at a recipe to see how much coffee to use. I had my standard base, so I figured I'd just throw some coffee in. Well ... it's very... coffee. I used 5 tablespoons of coffee grinds as opposed to most recipes call for 2. And for some reason I didn't think I needed to hard core strain out the grinds. I just used a regular sieve but you could see flecks of coffee bits all through it.

Needless to say, I wasn't very happy with it. Maybe that's why I didn't blog about it. I melted it down to strain and rechurn it. I tried to put it through a paper filter but that didn't work. I guess the surface tension is just too high on the thickened cream to let it get through the filter. At first I thought it would get through, just slowly so I left it sitting in the fridge overnight. It didn't work. So I strained it with my french press. That still didn't get all the grinds out but it's much better now.

I lost quite a bit of the ice cream to the filters and to the french press. I had some chocolate ice cream that wasn't the freshest in the freezer so I decided to melt that in too, rechurn it and call it mocha. I'm pretty happy with it now. The coffee flavor is kinda smack you in the face and wake you up wow coffee but there's enough sugar and fat and chocolate in there to make it good.

So here's my recipe, sorta.

Mocha Ice Cream

4 cups half and half
5 tbsp coarse ground coffee
1 cup sugar
5 egg yolks
a few hefty scoops of chocolate ice cream

Heat the half and half, coffee and sugar in a pan on medium low, just until it reaches a simmer.
Put the egg yolks in a bowl.
When the coffee mixture reaches a simmer, slowly add to egg yolks to temper the yolks.
Pour the mixture back in the pan.
Cook on low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens.
Strain through a french press and pour into a bowl.
Stir in chocolate ice cream and mix until smooth.
Let it sit in the refrigerator overnight.
Churn in your ice cream maker.
Put it in a container and let it hard set overnight.