Blackberries, it seems, would prefer you not pick them. That must be why in addition to hundreds of tiny sharp thorns ready to embed themselves in your skin, blackberry bushes arm themselves with an array of other nasty surprises. Poison ivy, snakes, spiders, hornets and wasps are only some of the things your fingers may brush while reaching for that plump purple berry. One taste of this ice cream, however, and you’ll be championing the return of Br’er Rabbit. (Hopefully this time without the racism.)
Between strawberries, cherries, black raspberries and blackberries, we have jammed so much jam into our freezer Michelle fears its shelves are becoming dangerously overloaded. (Steve reminds Michelle that it is still peach season, and as yet there are no jars of peach jam about.) However, Steve shows no sign of slacking off his pursuit of more berries, since he claims there are still some to be found (plus he’d like to see if he can once again scare up the mother turkey and poults he saw the other day). So we decided to look for other avenues, and decided to try making a blackberry ice cream we got from (of course!) Alice Waters. Then we decided to add in Alice Medrich’s idea for chocolate chips. Our new iced obsession was born. Creamy, tangy, brilliantly purple ice cream tangled up with chewy, fudgy chunks of bittersweet chocolate. Where is Br’er Fox when you need him?
BLACKBERRY CHOCOLATE CHIP ICE CREAM
(Ice cream adapted from Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food/chocolate chunks adapted from Alice Medrich’s Bittersweet)
- 3 cups blackberries (preferably wild)
- Squeeze of fresh lemon juice
- 1/4 c. + 1/2 c. sugar, divided
- 3 egg yolks
- 3/4 c. half and half
- 3/4 c. heavy cream
- 1/2 t. vanilla extract
- Pinch of salt
- 4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
- 2 TB water
Warm berries in a saucepan until they begin to release their juices. Add a squeeze of lemon juice. Purée in a food processor and strain through a fine-meshed strainer to remove the seeds. You should have about 1 cup of juice. Stir in 1/4 cup sugar.
Set a fine-meshed strainer over a heatproof bowl.
Whisk egg yolks together in a small bowl.
Heat half and half and 1/2 cup sugar over medium heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved. When hot, whisk a bit of the hot mixture into the egg yolks. Then, mix the warmed yolks into the hot mixture in the pan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon. Do not let it come to a boil. Strain.
When custard has cooled slightly, add heavy cream, strained berry purée, vanilla and salt. Cover and chill overnight.
Melt chocolate and water in a double boiler, stirring frequently. Pour mixture onto a sheet of parchment paper. Slide paper onto a small plate or baking sheet and freeze. When chocolate is firm, chop into chunks. Return to freezer until needed.
Freeze ice cream according to ice cream maker’s instructions. Add the chocolate chunks at the end.
Gourmandistan 
THAT LOOKS AMAZING! Wow! I maybe in love with that ice cream.
Thanks, Janet. It was absolutely delicious. And worth every thorn. (Oh, wait. I didn’t pick a single berry this year. 🙂 Well, every thorn that Steve encountered.)
HA! I shared this link with a friend. Keep an eye out for DFen. That’s Denise. She’s a hoot!
I love blackberries with chocolate. Unfortunately, this ice cream is probably not lessening the burden on your freezer shelves. Fortunately, I can tell that it is very much worth it!
Well, the good thing about ice cream (especially this one) is that it doesn’t linger long in the freezer!
I am so fortunate to have numerous wild blackberry patches running through our 7 acres. I’ve done blackberry martinis and sorbet. This is a decadent dish very worth trying! Thank you for sharing 🙂
Oh, good for you! Aren’t they wonderful? This is our best year for them in, literally, decades. Hmmm, a blackberry martini sounds awfully good…
That looks amazing — I’ll take a double scoop please! Beautiful pictures too. They are making my mouth water!
Oh, thank you! I’m so glad we (or, rather, the wonderful Alice Medrich) cracked the code for chewy rather than hard as a rock chocolate chips.
Very, very cool pictures. Nice one.
Merci, Roger! Do you have wild blackberries? We’ve seen them or something that looked like them in France, but truthfully they didn’t seem to have a lot of taste. Maybe it was because it was in Fall? Or maybe they were imposters.
Wow, what an amazing color! I covet that ice cream; it sounds absolutely amazing. And thank you for the chocolate chunk method, which I will borrow. :-_
There’s a local-ish ice cream chain here (out of Cincinnati) called Graeter’s which has the most delicious black raspberry chocolate chip ice cream which this so reminds me of, only this is better. The best thing about all of Graeter’s chocolate chip ice creams is how they get the chips to be soft and chewy. I always figured it was massive amounts of oil or chemicals. (And theirs may be. I don’t know.) Who’d have imagined that you could get that result just by breaking temper and adding water? Alice Medrich is a goddess.
That is genius! I would never have thought of it. Bookmarking!
Beautiful shots, especially the second one!! and what a delicious recipe!!
Grazie! It really did work out well—and thank goodness for it given all of Steve’s labor in picking the darned things.
Looks like my fave ice cream from Graeter’s! I’ll have to give this one a try for sure. My husband keeps coming home telling me about all of the blackberry bushes on his farm but has yet to bring any home!
Absolutely! That’s exactly what we were thinking of when we made it.
This is exactly the kind of summery ice cream I was looking for! Thanks for sharing!
So glad you happened upon it. We’re definitely freezing lots of berries for later batches.
This is genius! I am putting on my battle gear and heading up to hill to get a bucket of berries! Thanks for the inspiration!
It’s worth every chigger, snake, slug, etc. But that’s easy for me to say. I didn’t pick a single berry this year. 🙂
That looks like fantastic ice cream – please don’t throw me in the briar patch 😉
I know. It’s brutal. But it is a good way to get away from Br’er Fox.
Boy, I’ll take a gallon. Looks like that beekeeper/hazmat outfit came in handy. Ken
Funny you say that. I have a photo of Steve cleaning out one of the chicken coops with a big shovel and wearing his bee suit and a mask and he looks just like a hazmat guy! The ice cream, I must say, was absolutely delicious. So glad that “we” (er, I meant Alice Medrich) cracked the code of the chewy chocolate chunks. I hate it when you get hard as a rock chips in ice cream.
I’d love a scoop (or two) of this right now! Awesome idea to add chocolate chunks – hard to go wrong with that 🙂
Thanks, Bianca! If you haven’t already, try that method for chocolate chunks in ice cream. They are wonderfully chewy, and so easy.
Wonderful! It looks so refreshing and full of taste. The chocolate pieces go in beautifully. Great job!
🙂
Thanks so much, Yelena!
This sounds truly wonderful, Michelle. That color is perfect and I bet it tastes every bit as good. I’ve just started making ice cream for the season but had to stop. I’ve no room for the canisters in my freezer. I bought over 12 lbs of tart cherries on my return trip and, well, that’s that. I think a pie and batch of jam should free up enough space for a canister. Life is hard. 🙂
Oooh, Michigan cherries. Jealous. 🙂
I don’t have an ice cream maker, but I couldn’t not comment on this gorgeous post! The ice cream looks fantastic. I’ve been eating a lot of blackberries from a farmer’s market I work on Saturdays. Slightly tart, but so good!
-Grace @ FoodFitnessFreshAir.com
Thanks so much, Grace. Buy an ice cream maker! We just have a little cheap one that involves freezing the canister. I covet my mother’s fancy sit-on-the-counter one.
Reblogged this on Our Green Acres and commented:
We all know how I am totally embracing the country life and all it has to offer. And this time of year it’s Blackberries. If you’ve been following my blog you know I’m not very conventional so I started with Blackberry Martini’s and then on to Blackberry BBQ sauce. Well I knew I would end up making some ice cream. But not sure on the recipe. Until I was introduced to this blog and the first recipe I see is Blackberry Chocolate Chip Ice Cream. I present to you – Gourmandistan! Indulge your tastebuds folks.
Thanks—hope you like it as much as we did!
I don’t see how we couldn’t love it 🙂
Oh my goodness, this ice cream looks killer. KILLER.
It really did exceed all expectations. Wish there was more in the freezer. 🙂
Looks fantastic. Love the color your got on it!
Thanks, Daisy! I’d have hated to ruin it after Steve spent so many hours picking the berries.
blackberry ice cream sounds delish!
It is!
Time for some homemade waffle cones to accompany such a regal-looking ice cream ! Delicious !
I was sooooo wishing that we had the appropriate tools for that…
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hi Michelle! This ICe Cream just does not look real! Did you really make it? It looks too good to be true 😀 I wanna eat it right through the screen! I treid a cherry Ice Cream but now I am determined to try your recipe!
I did indeed. 🙂 Your cherry ice cream looks just as good!
Incredible colours!!
Thanks so much. I miss blackberry season already!
Gosh, that looks good. I adore wild berries … and used wineberries and blackberries in anything I could when I lived in Virginia.