My husband is a huge nutella fan, so when I found a chocolate hazelnut milk at my local health food store last week he started to petition for nutella rocky road ice cream. I liked the idea, but the chocolate hazelnut milk was both dairy free and gluten free, so I wanted to maintain that throughout the dish. Nutella is not dairy free. Most Nutella-like spreads also have milk in them.
Wednesday at Whole Foods my husband found Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut Spread, an organic dairy- and gluten-free alternative, but it is a spendy purchase. If you don't need to have things be gluten or dairy free, then regular nutella should work just fine and be much easier on the budget!
My husband took photographs, while I was upstairs digging through my bag of fabric for a project. By the time I was done, his bowl of ice cream was empty. A pretty good endorsement of its nutella-nature. I have enough of the chocolate hazelnut milk to make a second batch and the puppy dog eyes say I have too.
Nutella Rocky Road
Ingredients
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/4 c. cocoa
1 TBSP cornstarch
2 c. Chocolate Hazelnut Milk (from Pacific Nut Food)
pinch salt
1/2 c. Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut Butter (Nutella for the non-dairy averse)
1/2 c. hazelnut, toasted with the skins peeled and chopped
1/2 c. miniature marshmallows
1 TBSP cocoa nibs (optional)
In a small dish, combine the sugar, cocoa and cornstarch. Whisk to combine. Add to the milk and salt in a medium pot and heat until it bubbles and foams. Cook for an additional minute and then turn off the heat. Add the Nutella and whisk until completely combined. Chill until cold or overnight in refrigerator.
Toast hazelnuts (for raw nuts: if you already have toasted ones, you can skip this step) on a cookie sheet or other baking pan with sides at 350F for about 9 minutes, stirring midway through. Once toasted, rub as much of the skins off as you can. Store in an air tight container. I wanted these cold for the ice cream, so I put them in the fridge.
Whisk the cold mixture to loosen before adding to the ice cream maker. Chop the hazelnuts and mix in a small bowl with the miniature marshmallows and the cocoa nibs. In the last 5 minutes of churning, add the hazelnut-marshmallow mixture.
This ice cream took much less time to churn than normal. In my Cuisinart ice cream maker, It took about 20 minutes from adding the mix to scooping it into a separate tupperware for freezing. The cornstarch, which I added for extra thickening, is quite probably optional too. If you forgo the cornstarch, then it might take an extra 5 minutes to churn the ice cream. I will try it that way next.
