Homemade Coconut Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

I have a major sweet tooth and more often than not I'm craving ice cream. I love all kinds of ice cream, but at the top of my list is mint, mocha, heath, chocolate chip, or ice cream with liquor! Yeah, the best of both worlds. I must get that from my dad who loves Brandy Alexander's.

Last year when given the privilege to choose a gift out of a catalogue for a job well done at work, I didn't hesitate at all to choose the Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker. Oh, it's just as lovely as I thought it would be.

My first batch of homemade ice cream was a White Russian Ice Cream from Rachael Ray's Magazine

1 Cup whole milk
1/2 cup sugar
Pinch salt
5 large egg yolks, beaten
2 cups heavy cream, chilled
2 tablespoons coffee liqueur, chilled
2 tablespoons vodka, chilled

Directions
In a small saucepan, cook the milk, sugar and salt over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar dissolves, about 4 minutes (do not let the milk boil).

Slowly pour one-half of the hot milk mixture into the eggs, whisking.

Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring and scraping with a heatproof spatula, until thick enough to coat the spatula, 8 - 10 minutes.

Strain the mixture into a metal bowl. Stir in the heavy cream. Refrigerate until cool, about 2 hours.

For Racheal's recipe, you stir the coffee liqueur and vodka into the ice cream base. Pour into an ice cream maker and process according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Another idea is to chop up some peaches for Peaches and Cream Ice Cream.

What a lovely summer ice cream flavor.

It’s best to put the finished ice cream back in the freezer for a few hours to firm up before serving.

The next ice cream recipe I tried absolutely flopped. I don't know where that recipe is, it wasn't far from the Rachael Ray recipe though. I did something terribly wrong on the stove. My milk, sugar and egg mixture turned into a custard. No biggie, I put the custard in the fridge and used it in another way, but I didn't get the creamy ice cream I was craving that night.

Then, I discovered that ice cream doesn't have to be cooked! I found a recipe online where you dump all the ingredients and then follow your ice cream maker instructions.

Here is what I used:
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk1 (5-ounce) can evaporated milk2 tablespoons sugar2 teaspoons vanilla (Mexican vanilla is heaven here)2 cups whole milk

Mix all this together and chill in the fridge to get the mixture ice cold if you can. If you can't wait, put it right into your ice cream maker and follow its directions. Mine makes ice cream in 30 minutes. It is more like soft serve at this point, but I'm okay with that. I put the leftovers in a plastic container, sealed tightly and into the freezer. It firms up overnight.

To the above no-cook recipe I added mini semi-sweet chocolate chips and substituted a can of coconut milk instead of the whole milk. It was soooo great! It had a light hint of coconut and then a little bite of chocolate in every bite. How could it be better? Well, I poured a shot of bailey's caramel liquor on top of my scoop of homemade ice cream. It was such a treat!