Roasted Cherry and Chocolate Ice Cream is a riff on the popular cherry chocolate ice cream you know and love, but with a surprise twist.
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Is there anything better in these hot and heavy days of early August than a sweet, creamy, icy cold dish of homemade ice cream? If there is, I’d like you tell me what, because I need to know.
For my money, there’s nothing that beats it. And knowing that the dish of chocolate-y, cherry-y goodness you crave is only a few simple steps away? Even better!
This recipe takes a while in that there are several steps that involve waiting for things to get cold, but the actual work part of the recipe is limited, and incredibly simple.
One of my all-time favorite ice creams is the Ben and Jerry recipe that rhymes with Shmerry Gmarcia. I adore anything with cherries, and if chocolate can be added to that, all the better. This recipe is a riff on that one, but the secret twist is that you roast the cherries before adding them to the ice cream base. This creates a deeper cherry flavor that is absolutely delicious. Of course, you can skip the roasting step and just add the cherries as is, but I think that the roasting takes this ice cream to the next level.
Plus, it just sounds fancy, you know?
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A few words about eggs:
Eggs act as an emulsifier to bring all the ingredients together and it also helps create that rich, creamy texture that we all love. They also add flavor and help prevent ice crystallization. But people are weird about raw eggs, and this recipe doesn’t rely on cooking them first. In the US where I live, all the eggs I buy are pasteurized and safe to eat raw, but I get that some people don’t want to eat them. For those people, I’ll provide an alternative egg free recipe in the recipe card below.
The benefit of the eggs going in raw is that you don’t have to worry about tempering the eggs, or waiting for the cream to cool, so that saves you some time.
Ingredients Needed
- Cherries
- Chocolate Chips or chunks
- Eggs
- Sugar
- Heavy cream
- Whole milk
Tips and Tricks
Use the highest quality ingredients you can afford. At the end of the day, this recipe is basically cream and milk, so use the best cream and milk you can find. You want full fat cream and whole milk. Fat = flavor, and the fat in the milk and cream is where the creaminess comes from.
Chocolate: you know how they say that you should only cook with wine you would drink? I feel like cooking and baking with chocolate is the same thing. Don’t add chocolate that you wouldn’t eat into ice creams, or you only end up with a chocolate you wouldn’t want to eat. You can use chocolate chips in this recipe, or you could grate a high quality chocolate bar (freeze for 20 minutes, then grate on the large holes of a box grater) or you can use chocolate chunks, which is what I did for this. Trader Joe’s semi-sweet chocolate chunks are my favorite.
NO EGG VARIATION:
- 2 CUPS HEAVY CREAM
- ⅔ CUP HALF AND HALF
- ¾ CUP SUGAR
POUR THE CREAM INTO A MIXING BOWL AND ADD THE SUGAR SLOWLY, WHISKING CONTINUOUSLY UNTIL FULLY BLENDED. POUR IN THE HALF AND HALF AND MIX TO BLEND. THE REST OF THE RECIPE STAYS THE SAME. THIS ICE CREAM IS VERY CREAMY BUT DOESN’T STORE WELL SO YOU’LL WANT TO EAT IT WITHIN A DAY OR TWO AT THE MOST.

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Roasted Cherry and Chocolate Ice Cream
Ingredients
- 2 cups cherries de-stemmed and pitted
- ⅓ cup chocolate chips, chunks, or grated
- 2 large eggs
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1 cup whole milk
- Red food coloring or maraschino cherry juice optional
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with foil. Roast the pitted cherries for 20-30 minutes. Check after 30 and if they're starting to brown too much, take them out.
- Let the cherries cool for 15-20 minutes.
- In a small food processor or blender, mix ½ cup of the cherries with ½ cup of heavy cream, and place in a bowl to chill in the fridge for at least an hour. Place the remaining cherries in another bowl in the fridge to chill as well.
- In a mixing bowl or in the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk the eggs until light and fluffy (about a minute or so), then slowly add the sugar a little bit at a time while whisking. Let continue to whisk for at least a minute more, until sugar is completely blended.
- Pour in the remaining 1 ½ cups of cream, milk, and cherry/cream mixture and whisk to blend.
- At this point, you can add a little bit of red food coloring to get a pretty pink color or you can add 2-3 tablespoons of maraschino cherry juice, which will give a very light pink color to your ice cream.
- Transfer the cream mixture to a chilled ice cream maker and chill following manufacturers instructions.
- After the ice cream firms up (about 15 minutes or so) add the roasted cherries and chocolate and continue freezing for another 3-5 minutes.
- Transfer to a freezer safe vessel, and chill in the freezer for at least 5 hours.
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