Butter brickle ice cream is delicious. I figure that a great way to use it is in a chocolate coated ice cream bar, similar to a Magnum® bar. Thus, I pulled together the recipe information to make each component and put them all together in sequence in this recipe. I also provide detailed instructions to assure success.

I bought silicone molds for making ice cream bars through Amazon®. The brand is Silikomart® Easy Cream Ice Cream Molds. They are made in Italy and they cost about $25 for enough molds to make four ice cream bars. I doubled the purchase so I could make eight ice cream bars at a time. Each mold will hold three volume ounces of ice cream. Thus, about three cups of ice cream are needed to make eight ice cream bars. The molds come with a package of 100 popsicle type sticks and you can buy the packages of sticks separately and inexpensively. One of the more interesting features of the molds is that you can use them for baking treats as well as frozen treats. They are very flexible, such that a frozen ice cream bar with the stick in it can be removed from the mold easily by manually flexing the mold after running warm faucet water over the back of the mold for five to ten seconds.

Thus, you make ice cream in a gelato maker and while it is still "relatively" soft you fill the molds, insert the popsicle sticks, and then hard freeze the bars. Once they are hard frozen you can remove the bars one at a time and coat them with a chocolate coating that will quickly set on the surface of the cold ice cream.

I made a simple, 12" long 2x4 wood board device (a holding rack) with 1" deep openings cut out to hold the base of each of eight popsicle sticks, well spaced from each other, so when the ice cream bar has been coated with the chocolate you hold it upside down until the chocolate coating hardens, then you turn it upright and put the base of the stick into an opening on the wood board where it will be held stationary. The idea is that you put the completed bars and the wood board into the freezer to complete the hardening process. Later you can remove and cover the ice cream bars with the product of your choice ... either something like a popsicle bag or, in my case, I will use small vacuum seal bags and slightly vacuum seal each bar for freezer storage, knowing that each bar will be very fresh later when the bag is opened.

Okay, the first product you want to make is the butter brickle, and the ingredients and directions are shown immediately below, followed by the recipe for the ice cream, and finally the recipe for the chocolate coating.

The Butter Brickle

Ingredients:

1/3 cup of light brown sugar

6 tablespoons of unsalted butter

Directions:

Add the brown sugar and butter to a small heavy bottom saucepan.

Bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low.

Use an instant read candy thermometer to monitor the temperature.

Continue to cook until the candy thermometer reaches 290 degrees F.

Pour the butter brickle onto a silicone baking sheet, spread it out thinly and then allow it to cool.

Once cooled, break up the butter brickle into pieces sized about 1" square.

Put the butter brickle pieces into a one gallon Ziploc® freezer bag, seal it and use a wood kitchen mallet to crumble them. Then set the bag with the crumbled butter brickle aside in the freezer.

Now proceed to make the ice cream.

The Ice Cream

Ingredients: (makes about 6 cups, allowing extra for eating some of the ice cream later from a dish)

1 1/2 cups of milk

3 cups of heavy whipping cream

1 cup of light brown sugar

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

3 extra large or jumbo eggs

Directions:

Turn on the gelato machine to pre-chill it.

Use an electric mixer to mix the eggs for one minute on medium speed.

Add the vanilla and the brown sugar and continue mixing for two minutes.

Add the heavy cream and the milk and continue mixing for two minutes.

Transfer the mixture to the gelato machine.

Run the machine until the ice cream is fairly firm.

Add the butter brickle pieces and continue to run the gelato machine for two to three minutes to let the pieces blend into the ice cream.

You are now ready to put the finished butter brickle ice cream into the silicone molds.

Use the ice cream paddle that comes with the gelato maker to remove ice cream and fill each mold.

Smooth out the top surface of the ice cream in each mold opening. Then insert the popsicle sticks into the mold openings, being sure to keep about three inches of each stick outside of the ice cream.

Hard freeze the ice cream bars in the deep freeze for four or more hours.

Put any extra ice cream into a plastic container with a tight fitting lid and put the container into the deep freeze.

Now, while the ice cream bars are hardening in the deep freeze you can make the chocolate coating.

The Chocolate Coating

Ingredients: (Makes about one cup of chocolate coating)

4 ounces of dark high cacao content chocolate (like a Ghirardelli® 100% cacao baking bar)

3.2 ounces of coconut oil

2 ounces of light corn syrup

1 tbsp. of sugar

1.4 grams of soy lecithin

2 tsp. of water

Directions:

Weighing out and using the tiny amount of thick, sticky soy lecithin is a challenge. Use a precision kitchen scale accurate to the tenth of a gram. Put the one tsp. of corn syrup into the weighing pan and put the weighing pan on the scale. Now turn on the power to the scale. It will read zero as the weight. Add the soy lecithin by dipping a kitchen table knife about one inch into the jar of soy lecithin vertically and then lifting the knife out and letting most of the soy lecithin drip/run off the tip of the knife back into the jar. Then hold the knife vertically over the weighing pan and let just enough soy lecithin drip from the knife into the corn syrup, until you have a weight of 1.4 grams showing on the scale display. Stir to combine the corn syrup and the soy lecithin. Remove the weighing pan and use the contents in the next step.

Put the 2 ounces of corn syrup, one tbsp. of sugar, the water and the corn syrup/soy lecithin mixture into a small bowl. Stir well to get the soy lecithin to mix with the corn syrup. Heat the mixture briefly in the microwave oven for 20 seconds and mix/stir until the sugar has dissolved. If necessary repeat the heating and stirring until the sugar has dissolved.

Use a wooden cutting board to cut the chocolate into pieces roughly 1/2" square. Barely melt the chocolate pieces in a small bowl with the coconut oil in the microwave oven with a 30 second heating cycle on high heat. Stir the mixture to help melt the chocolate, then, if necessary, repeat the heating cycle but only for 20 seconds. Stir until the mixture is well combined, then mix/stir/whisk it together with the corn syrup mixture until well combined. If necessary heat the mixture briefly in the microwave oven and stir until well combined.

Chill the chocolate coating in the refrigerator briefly to cool it but do not try to use it if it has hardened. If it hardens before you need to use it then lightly microwave it immediately before use and stir it just enough to return it to a thick liquid consistency.

Once the ice cream bars are hard frozen you are ready to use the chocolate coating. The procedure described next explains how to coat them and then store them for a final freezing prior to packaging.

Chocolate Coating Procedure:

Gently remove an ice cream bar from the silicone mold after running warm faucet water over the back of the mold for no more than five to ten seconds.

Hold the bar upside down over the bowl of chocolate coating. Use a small scoop or large spoon to extract chocolate coating from the bowl and drizzle it over the ice cream portion of the ice cream bar evenly, letting the excess coating drip back into the bowl.

Repeat this process to make sure the bar is completely covered with chocolate, then once the chocolate sets (hardens), which happens quickly, invert the ice cream bar and insert the base of the stick into the wood holding rack.

It is best to keep the wood holding rack in a regular refrigerator freezer while you are coating the ice cream bars so that the ones done earliest stay frozen.

Repeat the above coating steps for the other ice cream bars.

At this point you can package the ice cream bars and then keep them in a deep freeze.

Enjoy this delight ... you earned it!