Guanaja 70% dark chocolate ice cream
Guanaja at 70%: bitter, intense and very dark. The chocolate for people who want no extra sugar.
A chocolate ice cream does not need milk. Water leaves the cocoa far cleaner, and the couverture's own fat — 42 % in Guanaja — is enough to give creaminess.
Ingredients
For 1 kgTick each ingredient as you get it ready.
Need to adjust the formula?
Step by step
9 steps · follow the order for the best result
Chef's notes
- ·The couverture, on the way down, at 70 °C, then blend to emulsify.
- ·Do not skip the cold ageing: it hydrates proteins and stabiliser and clearly improves the texture.
- ·The serving temperature depends on your recipe: if you formulate to a softer PAC than your freezer (say -11 °C with the chest at -18 °C), temper it for 5–10 min before serving; if the PAC matches your freezer, it can be eaten straight out.
- ·Why formulate at -11 and not at -18 °C: even though your freezer sits at -18 °C, formulating at -11 makes the ice cream tastes better — at -18 it is so cold that the taste buds barely pick up the flavour and the fat is slow to melt in the mouth. And keeps better: ice cream formulated at -11 and kept at -18 has less free water, suffers less from Ostwald ripening (ice crystals joining and growing) and keeps its creaminess longer.
- ·Keep your own notes: write down the POD and PAC that work best with your machine.
The texture
spot on
Dense, dark and deeply chocolatey. The couverture's cocoa butter builds a firm body that clings to the palate, and on a water base the cocoa reads with nothing in between. The bitterness holds to the end.
All about this Guanaja 70% chocolate ice cream
There is no whole milk or cream here: the base is water and skimmed milk powder, which brings the milk solids without bringing fat. All the fat comes from the couverture.
The solids climb far above those of an ordinary custard, because chocolate is almost entirely solid. That is what gives the dense, almost chewy texture typical of well-made chocolate ice creams.
The couverture goes in at 70 °C, as the mix comes down: it melts in the mixture itself and emulsifies with the blender. There is no need to melt it separately.
This formula is not ours: it is inspired by the one the Spanish team took to the 2014 Gelato World Cup, made up of Jaume Turró, Jordi Mora, Baltasar Massot, Mario Masiá y Adolfo Romero. We leave it as it is and do not measure it against our own targets.
The ingredients and what each does
Every ingredient has a technical job: cream brings fat and creaminess, milk powder raises the non-fat solids, the sugars set the sweetness and the freezing point, and the stabiliser controls crystal growth during storage.
Technique and controlling the numbers
Adjusting the POD (sweetening power) and the PAC (antifreezing power, given as a target temperature) lets you match sweetness and hardness to your taste and your machine. With the selectors in the side bar the formula recalculates itself and you will see how the amount of each ingredient changes.
Storage and common mistakes
Store at -18 °C in an airtight container and avoid freeze-thaw cycles. The commonest faults are not ageing it enough, too much sugar so it never freezes properly, and over-churning, which whips in too much air and wrecks the texture.
Recommended for this recipe
Equipment and ingredients that make the difference.
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Answers to your questions
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