Chocolate Ice cream bar (without machine)

This Homemade No churn Chocolate Ice cream bar recipe is seriously better than store bought! Believe it or not, it is made of using 4 simple natural ingredients in 10 minutes without any ice cream machine, shockingly easy! It is creamy, soft, full of natural chocolate flavours without being icy or hard! Hands down, the best No churn Chocolate ice cream you can make without using fancy and expensive ice cream machines!

I am a huge ice cream fan and has been researching the topic for ages that frankly made me worried making ice cream without machine. But! I am so pleasantly surprised how this turned out with such a little effort, that I will make more flavors for you soon!

This Chocolate Ice cream bar is made of using natural ingredients only - unlike store bough ice cream - and the recipe does not use egg, neither gelatin! Let´s get started!

What does No churn Ice cream mean?

It means no fancy expensive ice cream maker is required to make homemade ice cream, all you need is 10 minutes and an electric mixer or hand whisk. No churn ice creams like this Chocolatel Ice cream bar is usually made of a few simple ingredients (cream, condensed milk plus the flavoring like coffee, fruit puree etc) super quickly and easily. No Churn ice cream is the perfect ice cream recipe even if you are a beginner in the kitchen or perhaps a Pro but don´t want to purchase an ice cream machine.

Is No Churn ice cream good? I will be honest with you, I was sceptical and thought I can never make good, creamy ice cream without ice cream machine. How wrong I was! Since I tried this easy 10 minutes no churn ice cream base recipe, I can´t stop making a new flavour each week! See some of my other flavour recommendations at the end of this blog post!

Ingredient notes

• Heavy cream: Heavy cream also known as whipping cream has a fat content between 36% and 40% , the cream I am using is 36% to make this Chocolate ice cream recipe that makes the ice cream super creamy and fluffy. Use it very cold. Don´t have substitution for this as you need a very rich, fatty cream for the right soft and fluffy ice cream texture

• Sweetened condensed milk: Condensed milk is cow's milk from which water has been removed (roughly 60% of it). It is most often found with sugar added, in the form of sweetened condensed milk. Sweetened condensed milk is a very thick, sweet product, which when canned can last for years without refrigeration, if not opened. Possibly you can substitute it with a product called evaporated milk, which has undergone a lengthier preservation process because it is not sweetened. Evaporated milk is known in some countries as unsweetened condensed milk. Both products have a similar amount of water removed however since evaporated milk does not contain sugar, you will need to add sugar into it (possibly glucose syrup that makes the ice cram softer vs granulated sugar). If cannot access condensed milk, check my homemade sweetened condensed milk substitute recipe

• Cocoa powder: Generally always use unsweetened, 100% cocoa powder in baking. I use dutch-process cocoa powder from Callebaut, it has a lovely dark colour and it is lower in acidity, you can find it here. Does sweetened cocoa powder work? NO! It won´t have neither the taste nor the color to make chocolate ice cream

• Chocolate: The chocolate coat is quite an important part of this Chocolate ice cream bar both in terms of taste, also in terms of cruncy texture. Make sure you use high quality chocolate that has a pleasant taste! In this recipe I am using Callebaut Milk Chocolate (callets). This  is a high-quality chocolate (yet affordable) that contains a higher percentage of cocoa butter than the average supermarket chocolate.

• Chopped almond (optional): Any nut can work, almond, hazelnut, even walnut. It won´t add too much flavor but very important in terms of crunchy texture of the coating. Can be left out if there is any nut allergy concern

As you can see, it is totally possible, in fact super easy, to make ice cream at home using very few natural ingredients. Let's have a look at the technique part in the next section.

How to make this recipe

1. What equipment is needed to make homemade Ice cream bars

By now you already know that this Chocolate Ice cream recipe does not require an ice cream machine! Hurray! You can totally use a paper cup or plastic container to make ice cream however if you want to make your ice cream into a bar format then you will need a mould and some ice cream sticks.

The product I am using is a rather affordable Ice cream mould from Silikomart that you can purchase from Amazon in here, it contains the sticks too and perfect for making ice creams, I am very pleased with it! It has a nice size, and super easy to release the frozen product.

If this mold is not available for you, feel free to make the recipe in a loaf pan or why not also try this strawberry nutella ice cream from Sandy?

2. What is the process of making Homemade No churn Ice cream

Making this Chocolate Ice cream bar could not be simpler, literally 10 minutes or so, the most difficult part is the waiting until it sets in the freezer. The recipe makes 4 ice cream bars, feel free to half or double the recipe, if needed.

1. Measure all your ingredients with a Digital scale
2. Sift dark, unsweetened cocoa powder into sweetened condensed milk and mix throughout with a spoon until fully incorporated
3. Whip heavy cream with the help of an electric hand mixer until early hard peaks. The consistency is quite important for the perfect soft and fluffy ice cream texture so make sure that the cream is whipped up correctly and you stop as soon as early stiff peaks. If you happen to beat the cream longer, you might find that it will form clumps which then would make it impossible to fold it into the condensed milk mixture
4. Carefully, with the help of a rubber spatula, fold whipped cream into the condensed milk & cocoa powder mixture
5. With the help of a spoon fill 4 cavities of your Ice cream mould. Gently tap the mould onto the kitchen counter a few times so air bubbles will come to the surface then press one stick into each - the end of the stick should be where the mould indicates it, please see picture below
6. Smooth the top with an offset spatula. Make sure that the top is properly smooth and flat
7. Place Ice cream mould into the freezer for 6 hours and now it is onto waiting. Please note that if you don´t wait long enough, the ice cream might stuck into the mould also won´t be too easy to coat later

3. How to chocolate coat ice cream at home

Coating these Chocolate Ice cream bars could not be easier! Basically you will need to dip the frozen ice cream bars into melted chocolate howeer it is very important that both of them are on the right temp.

To be able to successfully and quickly coat your ice cream bars make sure that ice cream is properly frozen (min 6h in the freezer). For coating, chose a tall but skinny glass that you will pour the melted chocolate in just before coating. Truth is, you won´t need all the chocolate stated in the recipe, but you have to melt enough chocolate to be able to dip the ice cream into it. Any leftover chocolate can be poured onto a parchment paper then it will set in a few hours and can be reused. Since chocolate won´t be tempered this time (no need), the leftover chocolate won´t set hard and snappy but you can always use it for making other desserts, check my brownie recipe or brownie cookie recipe.

So the process of chocolate coating this ice cream bar is the following

• Melt chocolate in the microwave stirring every 30 sec. I use Callebaut Milk Chocolate (callets) and melted it to 45C. Make sure you don´t burn the chocolate, use plastic container (not glass)
• Then optionally mix chopped almond into the melted chocolate mixture
• Pour melted chocolate into a tall and skinny glass
• Unmould ice cream by gently releasing it from the Ice cream mould . The stick should come through the top. They should come out well, but a little bit of imperfection is fine since anyway they will be coated
• While holding the stick, immediately dip ice cream into melted chocolate then very gently shake the ice cream a bit so that coating will run through it without setting too thick. Since ice cream is very cold, the chocolate coating should set on it fairly quickly, in literally 30-60 seconds on room temp.
• Store ice creams in freezer until they fully set then few minutes later you can decorate them with melted chocolate
• Needless to say you have to work quick with ice cream, there is no time to wonder around or they start to melt especially before they are coated with chocolate

Tip 1: Make sure that ice cream bars are very cold, use them straight out of the freezer. Before ice cream is coated, don´t leave it outside the freezer, not even for one minute. Make sure that the 2nd ice cream is in the freezer in the mould while you are playing around with the 1st one and so on.

Tip 2: Only dip the ice cream bar into the chocolate once. A second dip would risk that 1. they melt together 2. chocolate set uneven “wrinkled”

Tip 3: If you have a warm kitchen and coating does not seem to set, open the freezer door and hold the ice cream “into the freezer” with the help of the stick. The chocolate coat will set in this cold temp fairly quickly

4. How to store these Homemade Chocolate Ice cream bars

Once chocolate coating sets, you have store these Chocolate Ice cream bars in the freezer either in a plastic container or eg. wrapped in parchment paper. Make sure you do not wrap it before chocolate coating properly sets as that would remove the chocolate coat.

Since this is a full natural ice cream using 4 real ingredients - unlike store bought ice cream - I find they might be a bit hard straight out of the freezer and they need about 3 minutes on room temp before the inside starts to get soft and they get the texture you see on these pictures. Obviously it depends on where you live, in a warmer climate they might start to melt already after one minute - this has never happened to me in Sweden:)

Want to try some other homemade ice cream recipes too?