Chocolate Cherry Ice Cream

This is hands-down the simplest and possibly the best chocolate ice cream you will ever come across.  Several months ago I came across a recipe for a Nutella ice cream on another blog, and I made it several times and absolutely loved it.  I use regular Nutella for this, although the original recipe called for vegan Nutella so you can certainly use that to make a vegan version.  I thought that I had originally found the recipe on a blog called Voracious (which was previously The Voracious Vegan), but on revisiting to link back to it I have been unable to find it.  So if you belong to the original copy of this recipe or know who does - please let me know so that I can link to it.

Most of the time, I make this just plain, but because I had a beautiful big bowl of fresh, fat, cherries to use, and inspired by the idea of Black Forest Gateau (let's face it cherries and chocolate are a marriage made in heaven), I stirred a pile of them into the freshly churned ice cream.

Now I've had chocolate ice cream before with cherries in, and the cherries have always stayed kind of soft - mine kind of froze.  I guess the difference (which I didn't think of at the time) is normally glace cherries would be used, and I'm assuming that because of the high sugar content they don't freeze.   So I realise that next time, if I'm to use fresh cherries, I probably need to poach them first in some sugar syrup.  Nevertheless, by the time the ice cream comes out of the freezer, and sits long enough to be "scoopable" (probably not a real word I know, but you understand what I mean), the cherries have also softened somewhat.

So how do you make this wonderful and simple ice cream?  You are not going to believe this.

Put equal quantities of Nutella (use vegan if that is your preference) and coconut cream - I used 1-1/2 cups of each - into a medium sized bowl and using an electric mixer beat until combined.  Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturers directions.  Once churned, remove to a plastic tub, stir in fruit if using, and put into freezer to firm up.  You could try a variety of different fruits in this - or even add chocolate chips and or nuts.

This post is a contribution to Make it with ... Mondays challenge Nutella - the linky will be open until Monday 14 February, so keep those Nutella posts coming, and don't forget to keep your almond posts coming too - the almond linky is open here and will remain open until Monday 21 February.

I'm also linking this to the Decidedly Healthy or Horridly Decadent Blog Hop.  Although I normally like to try and offer a reasonably healthy entry, it's all out decadence this week and I make no apology for it.