Light Stacciatella Ice cream (Mocha Version)

A refreshing and light stracciatella ice cream recipe with a nice twist! 

 There is nothing better than ice cream on those late nights when you're crying about a boy... That's a whole different story but, ice cream is pretty awesome. This ice cream recipe is a twist of the original stratiachella ice cream that a lot of people love! Statiachella is basically rich vanilla ice cream with ribbons of dark chocolate in it. yum! I love ice cream but not the unhealthy aspects of it so, I decided to lighten up the original recipe and add a nice twist. I decided that instead of using regular bland dark chocolate, I would add a hint of espresso powder to the melted chocolate to add a kick! It turned out to be a great decision and I love it!

 This recipe is so ridiculously easy and the results are great! It takes only about 15 minutes to make and there are five simple ingredients that are needed. Since I was a little girl, my sister and I drank skim milk. Even to this day, skim milk is preferred and whole or 2% milk just tastes plain weird! Yes, I am a very odd person. Anyways, my parents had recently bought a gallon of 2% milk and what better way to get rid of this stuff than to make ice cream!

Most Ice cream recipes call for cream, half and half, or whole milk but I used 2% milk. It was very risky because I have never made ice cream with anything other than coconut milk or cream so I was very afraid that the texture wouldn't be good. To my surprise, the texture was very light and fluffy. It was a great balance of creamy denseness of regular ice cream and a light refreshing sorbet texture. The flavors of the vanilla mixed with a hint of dark chocolate mocha was amazing and different from regular stachiatella. I'm pretty proud to say that I actually made this recipe myself! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Light Stacciatella Ice cream (Mocha version)

Ingredients for ice cream base:
-4 cups 2% milk (you can use whole, or coconut milk if you'd like)
-1 cup of sugar
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Ingredients for Mocha Stacciatella:
-1 cup dark chocolate chips (or 8 oz chopped semi-sweet chocolate)
-1 package instant coffee powder (you could also use 1 teaspoon coffee grounds)


Instructions:
1. Measure our 1 cup of Sugar and place into a medium sized bowl.

I ran out of white sugar so I had to put about 2 tablespoons of brown!

2. Add 4 cups of 2% milk (or Whole, or Coconut) to your medium sized bowl.
3. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
4. Immediately start stirring with a spoon until sugar has dissolved.
5. Add mixture to your ice cream maker and let it churn for about 20 minutes or until thickened

6. While your mixture is churning, take 1 cup of dark chocolate chips and place in a microwaveable bowl. You can either melt your chips by placing it in a double boiler or use the microwave like I did. Place your bowl of chocolate chips into your microwave and microwave until melted. Mix in half the packet of your instant espresso powder.

7. When your ice cream looks done, carefully spoon in your melted mocha chocolate periodically while the ice cream is churning. The melted chocolate will freeze into beautiful ribbons that taste awesome!

8. Spoon all of your ice cream into a freezer safe container and place in freezer to set (ripen) for 2-3 hours. Once ready, thaw a bit and spoon... and DEVOUR!!

right before going into the freezer!

right before I devoured this!

This recipe really refreshed me and I didn't have to worry about the saturated fats that come with dense creamy ice cream. It's an awesome pick me up for this hot summer!