Pink stracciatella (Hibiscus ice cream with chocolate)
Do you need a pair of pink glasses? Or a spoonful of pink dessert? You can have both;) Let’s call for spring, too much hesitating this year
Preparation steps
- Put the warmed cream and milk. When they boil, add the hibiscus flowers, reduce the heat to low and let simmer for about 1 minute. Remove from the heat, cover and let stand for 1/2 hour (stirring occasionally). After half an hour, strain through a thick mesh strainer and press the flowers well to squeeze as much liquid out of them as possible. You will get a mixture of milk and cream of a beautiful pink color. Put it to heat again until boiling.
- Meanwhile, in a bowl, mix the egg yolks with the sugar - I just mix them well with a whisk. coagulated.
- Return everything to the pot and cook over low heat until the cream thickens quite slightly, ie to lightly cover the back of the spoon you are mixing or if you have a food thermometer until it reaches 80-82 ° C. Stir the cream all the time because the eggs coagulate in an instant if you leave them to cook on their own or if you overheat them.
- Immediately pour the finished cream into a clean bowl that you put in an ice bath (a slightly larger bowl that you filled with cold water and ice. Stir occasionally and allow to cool completely to room temperature.
- Add Cointreau (or some other orange-based liqueur) and condensed milk to the completely cold cream. * You can also omit condensed milk, but from my experience I have seen that it makes ice creams much creamier and hardens less when left in the freezer. If you like less sweet, or want a more sour note of hibiscus flowers, and still want to add condensed milk, reduce the amount of sugar in the cream.
- Cover the bowl with the cream and place in the fridge to cool well, 3-4 hours, and even better overnight. After the cream has settled and cooled well, pour it into the ice cream machine and prepare the ice cream according to the instructions for your machine.
- While the ice cream is being prepared, chop the chocolate and melt it in the microwave or steam. When the ice cream is ready, ie quite thick and cold, pour the slowly melted chocolate in a thin stream through the opening on the lid while the machine is still moving. The chocolate will immediately squeeze in contact with the ice mixture and you will get beautifully crunchy pieces of chocolate.
- Immediately transfer the ice cream to a container suitable for freezing and place in the freezer for a couple of hours to fully compress. If the ice cream stays in the freezer for a long time, leave it in the fridge for about half an hour or 10-15 minutes at room temperature before serving.
- * If you do not have an ice cream machine, transfer the cream directly from the refrigerator to the freezer. Stir it every 1/2 hour to an hour for the first 2-3 hours. When the ice cream has shrunk a bit, add the chocolate as described above (ask someone to mix the ice cream for you while you pour the chocolate and that's how the ice cream machine works for you: D).
