Roasted Rhubarb and Dark Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream

Recipe by The View From the Great Island

Roasted Rhubarb and Dark Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream is a creamy dreamy homemade ice cream with a unique flavor combination ~ if you don’t have an ice cream machine, this is the reason to get one! So, here’s the story on this ice cream.  It was delicious, it has the subtle but unmistakable tangy taste of rhubarb, with chunks of dark chocolate to keep it from being too retiring.    But my fresh rhubarb was on the pale side, and so the color didn’t come through in the finished ice cream as vibrantly as I’d hoped.  It’s actually a little pinker than it shows up in the photos, but without the visual cue you probably can’t imagine the flavor.  So from a blogging/photographic standpoint this was a failure, but otherwise, it was fun to make, and tasted really good.  If you can find yourself some bright red rhubarb this spring, I recommend giving it a try. The dark chocolate chunks were a last minute whim.  I was watching the pale cameo pink ice cream churn around in the machine and my chocoholic side got the better of me.  I grabbed a couple of dark chocolate bars, chopped them up and …

Ingredients

• 1 lb fresh rhubarb, washed, trimmed, and cut in 2 inch chunks.
• 1½ cups heavy cream
• ½ cup whole milk
• 1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped, pod reserved
• 1 cup sugar
• juice of half a lemon
• 10 oz dark chocolate (chopped)

Method

1. Set oven to 400F
2. Put the rhubarb on a silpat lined baking sheet and roast for about 15 minutes, just until it softens and starts to release its juice.
3. Puree the hot rhubarb in a blender or food processor. Process until very smooth. Add the lemon juice and set aside.
4. Heat the cream, milk, sugar, vanilla seeds, and pod to a simmer. Take off the heat and let steep until cool.
5. Strain the cream mixture to remove the vanilla pods, and whisk it with the rhubarb puree. Chill in the refrigerator until very cold.
6. At this point taste the mixture. Add a little more lemon juice if needed. Pour into the bowl of your ice cream maker and process according to your machine's directions. When it is almost finished, add in the chocolate chunks.

View the recipe instructions at The View From the Great Island