Chocolate Mousse Royale

 Adam's been craving Chocolate Mousse Royale, his favorite flavor from Baskin Robins. But instead of heading to the nearest drive-in, he decided to make it himself. Homemade ice cream is dreamy, don't you think?  And these days it's really not even much work!

Adam's recipe:

The night before (or several hours), in your mixer:
1 1/3 cup of sugar
6 egg yolks
2/3 cup cocoa powder
2 pints heavy whipping cream
a pinch of salt
Blend together and then mix at high speed to whip air into the cream. Then refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.

Right before you're ready to put it into the freezer, put 1/2 cup chopped chocolate chips into the food processor.

This step didn't work as well as he'd hoped. He wanted tiny pieces of chocolate. He got that, plus some chocolate powder. Blend that into your cream mixture.

The secret to our easy ice cream is the Donvier Ice Cream maker we bought many years ago. We're not even sure when or where we got it. This thing works great! It has a frozen core, which we keep in the freezer. We can make ice cream any time we like.

And it involves very little "cranking" or stirring. There's a paddle that sits in the ice cream, and a handle on top, which you turn every 5 or 10 minutes, for about an hour. This recipe took a full hour, because it is so rich. You just turn the handle to scrape the cream from the sides. But you don't have to open up the container each time. It's easy.

We tasted the mixture last night, and it is so rich, chocolatey and silky-smooth. Adam mentioned that we achieved that smooth texture without the addition of propylene glycol ( a variant of anti-freeze), which is found in much commercial ice cream.

If you find an ice cream maker like this one around, I'd recommend buying it -- the results are worth it!