Simple mint chocolate chip ice cream from Kavey Eats

I spotted this recipe for a quick and easy triple mint choc chip ice cream over on Kavey's ace blog a few weeks ago. I think I was still wearing my big coat, gloves, and boots into work then, so filed it away for when the sun eventually emerged. Which thankfully it has now done- huzzah- ice cream time!

Anyway, I don't think I've ever made a custard from scratch, and though I can't imagine it would be that difficult, what immediately appealed about Kavey's recipe is that it uses a ready-made custard for the ice cream base. I thought this was a great idea, so there was no faffing around with double boilers and spare egg whites for me! Apart from the custard, there are only three other ingredients in this ice cream- mint leaves, mint chocolate and mint liqueur (or peppermint extract). I made some minor changes to Kavey's original recipe, so here's my version.

Recipe (enough for about 6 portions depending on greed):

500ml ready-made 'premium' custard
1-2 tblsp chocolate mint leaves, chopped
100g bar Green and Black's dark mint chocolate, chopped into small chunks
0.5 tsp peppermint extract

Simply combine all of the above ingredients, and either put into an ice cream maker or (as I don't have one) put into a container, put in the freezer, and mix thoroughly every 45 minutes or so for 5-6 hours to minimise ice crystals forming.

This was the perfect ice cream for a hot sunny day- not too sweet, fresh from the mint, and with big chunks of dark chocolate. And it was so genuinely simple to assemble, I will definitely be making this again.

 And in a rather meta development, I'm also submitting this post as an entry into Kavey's Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream May challenge, which has chocolate as its theme.