Fresh leaves only
Mint chip, no green dye
Real mint steeped in warm cream tastes like a garden in June and comes out pale beige-green, not fluorescent. The chocolate goes in as flecks, poured into the machine at the last minute.
- Makes about 1 litre
- 30 min hands-on
- Chill 4 hrs
- Churn 20–30 min
- Ice cream maker needed
Ingredients
For the ice cream
- 60 g fresh mint leaves (two generous bunches)
- 400 ml1⅔ cups whole milk
- 400 ml1⅔ cups double cream (heavy cream)
- 150 g¾ cup caster sugar
- 4 large egg yolks
- A good pinch of fine salt
For the flecks
- 100 g3½ oz dark chocolate
- 1 tsp coconut oil or flavourless oil (optional, for a finer snap)
Method
Steep the mint for 30 minutes and no longer. Left too long it turns grassy and bitter.
- Warm the milk, cream, half the sugar and the salt until steaming. Take it off the heat, push the mint leaves under the surface, cover, and steep for 30 minutes.
- Strain, pressing the leaves lightly. Squeezing hard forces out the bitter compounds along with the flavour.
- Reheat the minted dairy until steaming. Whisk the yolks with the remaining sugar, temper in a ladleful, then return everything to the pan.
- Cook to 77–82°C (170–180°F), stirring constantly, until it coats the spatula. Strain and chill for at least 4 hours.
- Melt the chocolate with the oil, if using, and let it cool until barely warm.
- Churn for 20–30 minutes. In the last minute, with the machine still running, drizzle the chocolate in a thin stream straight onto the moving paddle.
- Freeze for 4 hours in a shallow tub before scooping.
Worth knowing
- Spearmint is the familiar sweet-shop flavour; peppermint is sharper and more medicinal. Garden mint is usually spearmint.
- The colour is the giveaway that it is real. A faint sage green is exactly right.
- Chocolate must be barely warm when it goes in. Hot chocolate melts channels through the ice cream instead of setting into flecks.
- No mint bits. Everything green gets strained out; only the flavour stays.
Make it yours
Five ways to change it
Mint stracciatella, no eggs
Skip the yolks: stir the sugar into the minted dairy until dissolved and churn. Lighter, cleaner, less rich.
After dinner
Fold crushed dark chocolate mints through at the end instead of the flecks.
Double mint chocolate
Use the double chocolate base and steep the mint in the milk before you start.
Mojito
Add the zest of a lime to the steep and 2 tbsp white rum to the chilled base.
Mint fudge ripple
Layer with cold hot-fudge sauce as you pack the tub.
If it goes wrong
Rescue remedies
It tastes bitter or grassy
The mint steeped too long, or it was pressed too hard through the sieve. Thirty minutes and a light press is the rule.
I can barely taste the mint
Old mint has little to give. Use fresh, bruise the leaves in your hands before they go in, and steep the full half hour.
The chocolate went in as lumps
It was too cool, or poured too fast. Warm it slightly and drizzle in the thinnest stream you can manage.
Can I use peppermint extract?
A few drops will do in an emergency, but it tastes of toothpaste next to the real thing.