Orange Cardamom Ice Cream with Chocolate Chunks

This orange cardamom ice cream has the perfect combination of bright, sweet orange zest with the slight bitterness of the dark chocolate — it tastes exactly how the end of summer and beginning of fall feels.

UPDATE 7/2021 — I've given this orange cardamom ice cream recipe a post-pastry school update, simplifying the instructions and adding more information and tips on making ice cream. I also removed the hot fudge swirl because when I went back to test the recipe again I found it worked better to just pour the hot fudge on top if you wanted it, rather than swirling it in. The instructions for creating a hot fudge swirl are still included below as "optional" if you're interested!

If the title of this post alone, with its mentions of orange and cardamom and chocolate chips wasn't enough to convince you to make this ice cream... Well. Alright, let me do the song and dance to explain where my inspiration for this glorious orange cardamom ice cream flavor came from.

Once upon a time, Edy's (Dryer's if you're on the west coast) made a flavor called "Swiss Orange Sherbet." It was this creamy orange ice cream (Sherbet) studded with big, thick dark chocolate chunks.

Every day, when I got home from school, I'd scoop a large spoonful of Swiss Orange into a tall glass, pour orange juice over it, and drizzle in a stream of Hershey's chocolate syrup. As the ice cream melted, the chocolate would collect at the bottom, and I'd use a long spoon to scrape it out every last chocolate-y, orange-y drop I could.

Unfortunately, Edy's discontinued the flavor many years ago and, despite the internet's best efforts, it remains off the shelves to this day.

My secondary inspiration for this orange cardamom ice cream was my favorite cardamom gelato from Pitango in Baltimore. I'm obsessed with cardamom at the moment (it also makes an appearance in my Pear & Gruyere Tart) — it has such a distinct, complex flavor that is equally complicated to describe. (It's nutty and sweet and herbal and citrusy all at the same time???)

For this recipe, we're going to infuse our creme anglaise ice cream base with cardamom and orange zest, then finish it off by mixing in 1 oz chopped dark chocolate after churning.

Scalding and tempering your ice cream base - NEW!

Back when I first started developing ice cream recipes, I used the sweet cream ice cream base recipe from this Ben & Jerry's ice cream recipe book. But here's the thing... the Ben & Jerry's book was published in 1987 and hasn't been updated since! And some things about how we use raw eggs have changed since then.

None of the recipes in Ben & Jerry's book involve tempering the ice cream base (which is a pretty standard creme anglaise) to cook the eggs to a safe to eat temperature. That doesn't mean they're bad recipes — the ingredient quantities and ratios are spot on! But without tempering those unpasteurized eggs can be risky.

So I've updated the instructions for this orange cardamom ice cream to follow traditional creme anglaise procedure to temper the eggs and heavy cream together.

It's a simple update, really just adding one step, so don't feel overwhelmed by that.

Basically, you'll be heating the heavy cream and milk to just below boiling (a step known as "scalding") and then will slowly drizzle it into the eggs and sugar while whisking (a step known as "tempering").

Tempering helps gradually bring up the temperature of the eggs without scrambling them.

This step doesn't just make the ice cream base safe to eat either. Heating the eggs helps the proteins in the egg whites coagulate and thicken, giving you a creamier, smoother ice cream!

The 6 steps of creme anglaise:

1. Scald - Heating heavy cream and milk to just below boiling. This is where we infuse flavor, in this case orange and cardamom. DO NOT BOIL.
2. Ribbon - Whisking the eggs and sugar together until light and sightly fluffy. When you lift your whisk from the bowl, a "ribbon" should trail from the end.
3. Temper - Slowly combining the heavy cream and egg mixture to raise the temperature of the eggs without scrambling.
4. Cook - Return the cream and egg mixture to the stove over low heat, stirring just until it thickens and coats the bag of a spoon. DO NOT BOIL!
5. Strain - Remove any lumps.
6. Chill - Let the ice cream base mature, thicken, and intensify the flavors.

Freeze your chocolate shards before mixing them in

When adding mix-ins, you want to freeze them for at least 20 minutes before adding them. I usually stick them in the freezer as soon as I finish making my ice cream base so they're as cold as possible by the time I add them.

If you add the chocolate chips without freezing first, they'll melt the ice cream they touch and will slowly sink to the bottom.

You also want to make sure the churned ice cream has set enough to support them. The chocolate shavings this recipe calls for are thin and light enough that as long as you freeze them, you should be fine.

If your ice cream is still fairly soft at the end of churning, you can let it chill in the fridge for an hour before stirring the chocolate chips in.

When I re-tested this recipe, I used my friend Emily's fancy Breville Smart Scoop ice cream maker which churns a very firm ice cream. So I added the frozen chocolate chips in the final stage of churning.

Chopped chocolate vs. chocolate chips

I know it's tempting to just buy a bag of chocolate chips or chocolate chunks, but there's a reason most ice creams use chocolate shavings (literal chips of chocolate) instead. Because chopped chocolate shavings are so thin, they're less likely to become brittle and hard to bite into when they freeze.

"...The very thing that makes [chocolate] chips so good in cookies makes them a bad choice for ice cream: They contain stabilizers to help them keep their shape while melting, which means they make frozen chips as stubborn to melt as plain 'ol frozen chocolate, just with a waxiness replacing chocolate's typical grit."

— Epicurious: The Subtle Secrets to Making the Best Ice Cream Mix-Ins

How to serve orange cardamom ice cream

Orange cardamom ice cream goes really well with all things chocolate. Here's some suggestions for how to serve your homemade orange cardamom ice cream:

• In a tall sundae glass with a generous dollop of hot fudge.
• Try serving scoops of this orange cardamom ice cream in a glass of orange juice for a fruity twist on a float
• Bellini style, with orange juice and Prosecco in a tall champagne flute (and maybe even a drizzle of chocolate sauce)
• With a slice of rich chocolate cake
• Plain, on its own in a cup or cone

How to make a hot fudge swirl

This step is optional! But here's how to do it if you're interested:

First of all, this requires that you work quickly — VERY QUICKLY!!! CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH!!! — so that your ice cream doesn't melt and so your swirl doesn't harden too quickly.

First, let your ice cream chill for about an hour in the freezer. Then, after you've added in your frozen chocolate chips, transfer a portion of the ice cream into a separate bowl.

Dollop or drizzle a layer of your swirl (hot fudge, jam, caramel, dulce de leche, etc) onto the ice cream remaining in your container. Then, layer the ice cream from the bowl back into the container, sandwiching the swirl filling between two layers of ice cream.

Take a knife or skewer or the end of a spoon and stick it upright through all the layers so it's touching the bottom of the container, then drag it in a zig-zag or figure-8 shape to create the swirl. Repeat a few times. To create more swirls, simply increase the number of layers you create.

A few quick recipe and ingredient notes

• If you're interested in adding a hot fudge swirl, I recommend using this Fudge Ripple recipe from David Lebovitz.
• You can buy green cardamom pods at Spicewalla — a small tin is more than enough! You only need about 10-15 pods. Lightly crush them with a rolling pin or between your fingers just enough to split the outer shell.
• I use a small wire strainer to remove the cardamom pods from the heavy cream before tempering, but if you don't have one you can use a fork.
• You will need a large wire strainer at the end to strain your ice cream base before chilling it. This will remove the gritty pieces of orange zest and remove any lumps from cooking your creme anglaise base.
• For more intense orange flavor, use 2X the amount of zest, OR stir 1 tablespoon orange zest into the ice cream base after you strain it. That zest will remain in the ice cream while it churns giving it an orange flecked appearance. It will also add a bit of texture to the ice cream, so just keep that in mind if you go this route.

Recipe FAQ

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This post was originally published on 8/15/2019.