Determined to come up with something as we were celebrating a family birthday, I rummaged around in the kitchen and found some dark and milk chocolate Toblerone pieces tucked away in a box .... what to do? I had it! Make a quick 'half and half' chocolate gelato! I grabbed a pint of fresh milk, 2.5 oz of granulated sugar (caster sugar is also OK) and set about chopping up the chocolate into small pieces. I knew to weigh out just 4oz of chocolate because I already have a chocolate gelato recipe that uses 2 pints of milk with 8oz of chocolate, so I was effectively making half that batch size.
I gently heated up the milk and sugar together in a saucepan, stirring all the time to melt the sugar and ensure that the milk did not come to the boil. When the sugar was melted I removed the pan from the heat and simply dropped in the small chocolate pieces. Stirring the mixture for a few minutes saw the chocolate melt, although in this instance there were some pieces that didn't melt because of the make-up of the chocolate I had used. (Toblerone has tiny chunks of chocolate and nougat mixed in). That was fine by me because I knew it would give some texture to the gelato when frozen.
I left the milk/sugar/chocolate mixture to cool and set up my electric ice cream maker and some new little ice cream serving dishes and spoons which my mother kindly bought me last week (pictured left). Thanks Mum!Once the mixture was cool enough I chilled it in the fridge for 15 minutes and then poured it into my ice cream maker bucket.
I switched the machine on, ensured the timer was set for 25 minutes and away it went!
I joined the family to enjoy a favorite episode of Laurel & Hardy whilst the ice cream was churning. 25 minutes and a lot of laughs later it was ready.Taking my new, fun little ice cream dishes I served two scoops of my 'half and half' gelato into each one and handed them out.
The verdict?
Simple yet delicious!