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Crème Fraîche Ice Cream with Chocolate Turtletop Shell


creme fraiche ice cream with chocolate turtletop shell

Crème Fraîche Ice Cream with Chocolate Turtletop Shell

“Almost everyone has fond memories of ice cream cones dipped in brittle chocolate,” Gus Rancatore of Toscanini's Ice Cream says. This recipe was created by poet Adam Tessier, who discovered that in 1955, writer Marianne Moore was offered a chance to name the new Ford Edsel automobile. “Utopian Turtletop” was one of her suggestions. “The car had problems beyond the name,” Rancatore says, “but the shell is just fine.”

Ingredients
  

Ingredients

    CRÈME FRAÎCHE ICE CREAM

    • 1 cup whole milk
    • ½ cup sugar
    • 1 vanilla bean split lengthwise
    • Pinch of salt
    • 5 large egg yolks
    • 2 cups crème fraîche

    CHOCOLATE TURTLETOP

    • 6 cups semisweet chocolate finely chopped
    • 14 ounces Nutiva refined coconut oil not virgin
    • Salt to taste

    Instructions
     

    Instructions

    • Prepare an ice bath: Fill a large bowl with ice. Find a medium bowl that will nest inside it, along with a sieve. You’ll use these to cool the custard later.

    CRÈME FRAÎCHE ICE CREAM

    • Combine the milk, sugar, vanilla bean, and salt in a small saucepan over low heat. Warm until the mixture begins to cling to the sides of the pan. In a medium-size bowl, whisk the egg yolks.
    • Whisk the milk mixture gradually into the egg yolks, a little at a time, to form a custard base. Remove the vanilla bean. (To store it for future use, rinse the pod well using water or vodka. Pat it dry and refrigerate the bean in a container filled with white sugar. The sugar will also absorb the vanilla flavor, making it great for baking.)
    • Return the mixture to saucepan and stir over low heat. Be careful not to overheat and scramble eggs. The custard is ready when it’s just thick enough to write an initial in it on the side of a wooden spoon. Strain the custard into a medium-size bowl and set over the ice bath to stop cooking. Stir in the crème fraîche.
    • Cover and refrigerate until mixture reaches 40°F, at least 12 hours. Freeze in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer instructions.

    CHOCOLATE TURTLETOP

    • Combine the semisweet chocolate and the coconut oil in a double boiler set over medium heat. Stir until smooth. Remove from heat and add a pinch of salt, to taste. Just before serving, spoon the chocolate mixture over the ice cream; the mixture will harden into a fragile chocolate shell.

    Chef Gus Rancatore

    Chef Gus Rancatore is the owner of Toscanini's Ice Cream in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There he creates house-made ice creams with diverse ingredients such as cardamom, Grape-Nuts cereal, and goat cheese.

    Photographer Ekaterina Smirnova

    Ekaterina Smirnova (Kate) was born in Russia in a city called Yaroslavl. She came to the US when she was 17 years old to go to college. After graduating with a BA in Communications, she studied photography at NESOP. After assisting and shooting in corporate in-house studios, Kate chose to follow her passion and has been shooting food for the last five years.

    Stylist Catrine Kelty

    Stylist Catrine Kelty likes to create an environment that a person can relate to and want to be part of; where the food is a hero. She is always on the lookout for new food and fashion trends via publications from around the globe. An unusual surface, a special colored linen, an antique utensil, are all an incredible source of inspiration to accompany the perfect dish. She always looks forward to the challenge of translating the client’s vision through my collaboration with the photographer into the perfect image.

    Will Fertman

    Will Fertman is a writer and food business entrepreneur living in Berkeley, CA. A former staff writer and web manager for culture, Will wrote the Ruminations column for the magazine and spent lots of time wrangling social media. Today Will is the Director of Content and co-founder at the monger, a data-driven platform for the specialty food industry, supplying accountable information and transactions for producers, distributors, retailers, foodservice and consumers.

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