Fresh Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Pie—Not Really TWD

So I can’t really say I made this week’s TWD recipe, which was supposed to be Coffee Ice Cream Tart.  BUT, in Dorie’s playing around section, she says you can make this with any kind of ice cream you want and that the crust can be changed up with different nuts.  I made homemade Fresh Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream and a Chocolate Cookie Crust (no nuts).  And darn it’s good!

Just to add to the pie, I also added a layer of chocolate ice cream (not homemade).  So I really am sorry that I didn’t really make the TWD recipe this week, but if you’d like the Coffee Ice Cream Tart recipe, Jessica of Domestic Deep Thought will have it on her blog.  Here’s the recipe for my creation---

Fresh Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!, adapted from David Lebovitz Mint Chip Ice Cream

1  1/2 cups 2% milk

1  1/2 cups mint leaves, washed, dried and roughly chopped

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3 egg yolks

pinch of salt

1  1/2 cups heavy cream

6-10 drops green food coloring (optional)

3.5 ounces dark chocolate, chopped and melted

In a medium-sized saucepan combine the milk, sugar, salt and mint leaves and over medium heat, bring just to a simmer.  Remove from heat.   Let the mint seep in the milk for about an hour. 

Drain the milk into a bowl with a  fine mesh strainer.  Squeeze the milk from the leaves with your hands to get every bit of flavor you can.  Discard the leaves.  Reheat the milk mixture.  In a medium-sized bowl, whisk the egg yolks together.  Pour some of the hot milk into the egg yolks while whisking.   Whisk well.  With the remaining milk in the saucepan, return it to the heat and slowly whisk in the egg mixture.  Over medium heat, continuously whisk for about 5 minutes (or until with a thermometer it reaches 170 degrees).  It will thicken slightly and the mixture will coat the back of a wooden spoon. 

In the medium-sized bowl, set over a large bowl of ice water, add the cream and whisk in the hot custard mixture.  Add the green food coloring, if desired.  Let sit in the ice water batch and stir every few minutes.  Once the custard is chilled (about 30 minutes), you can churn it in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions or you can chill it for a couple hours and churn it later. 

Just before it is finished churning, drizzle in the melted chocolate slowly.  Put the ice cream in an air tight container and freeze for a couple hours.

That is some delicious melted 70% bittersweet Scharffen Berger chocolate I used for the ice cream.

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Chocolate Cookie Crust, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!, adapted from Food Network/David Lieberman

2 cups chocolate cookie crumbs (I used chocolate animal crackers)

1/4 cup dark brown sugar (light would be fine, too)

6 tablespoons Bestlife butter for baking, melted

Preheat oven to 30 degrees.  Grind the cookies in a food processor until they are fine crumbs.  (It took about 5 cups of cookies to make 2 cups of crumbs.)  Pulse in the brown sugar.  Drizzle in the melted butter while pulsing and continue until the crumbs are all moist.   Spread the crumb mixture into a 9 inch pie plate and press it evenly all around the bottom and sides of the plate.  Bake for 10 minutes.  Set on wire rack to cool completely.

Once the crust is cooled, spread about 2 pints of softened chocolate ice cream evenly over it.

Freeze for a couple hours.  Then spread the frozen, but softened mint ice cream over the chocolate layer.  Freeze again, even overnight is fine.  Cover it with plastic wrap.  Before serving, remove from the freezer for 10-15 minutes and sprinkle some shaved dark chocolate over the top.

Oh yes, it’s that good!  The fresh mint taste is great.  I took a bite of one of the boy’s servings.  I cannot let myself eat too much of a dessert like this. (sigh)  I really liked how the chocolate animal crackers worked for the crust as I wasn’t sure how they’d be.  While I think the boys (and Kevin) prefer the extract taste of mint, I really like the fresh mint in the ice cream.  Next time I will make it lower in fat so I can have more than a taste of it. ;)

There will be lot of other ice cream pies/tarts over at the Tuesdays With Dorie site.