If you think about the tasty chocolate coating on Dove® or Haagen Daz® ice cream bars you will realize you are eating freezer chocolate. Said chocolate is a mixture of ingredients that will be solid when very cold but melt quickly once inside your mouth. If you coat an ice cream bar with chocolate from a typical candy bar it will have the consistency of crayons when you try to eat it. Yuck!
This means we also need to make and use freezer chocolate any time we want to make any ice cream containing chocolate chips. For example, mint chocolate chip ice cream, which is delicious when well made.
The recipe below is simple except for getting and using food grade soy lecithin, which is an emulsifying agent and essential to making good freezer chocolate. You can buy the soy lecithin via the Internet from places like www.modernistpantry.com ... and you only need a small container, like 175 ml, and that will last you for years.
Getting the soy lecithin to combine with the other freezer chocolate ingredients is pretty easy but only if you combine it and mix it well first only in the corn syrup. Otherwise it is terrible to try to combine it with the other ingredients.
Ingredients:
5 ounces of dark high cacao content chocolate (Like a Lindt® dark chocolate bar, or my favorite, Callebaut® Dark Chocolate callets)
3 ounces of coconut oil (I like the type that has coconut flavor, which adds a subtle and delightful taste to the later ice cream products where it is used)
2 ounces of light corn syrup
1 tbsp. of sugar
1.5 grams of food grade soy lecithin in 1 tsp. of light corn syrup
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. I use a "reloader" scale that I purchased from Cabela's® ... one that is typically used to reload firearm cartridges.
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 1.5 grams showing on the scale display.
Clean the knife by wiping it firmly on both sides on the rim of the open soy lecithin bottle, then wipe the knife with a paper towel and return the lid to the soy lecithin bottle.
Remove the weighing pan from the scale. Stir the contents to combine the corn syrup and the soy lecithin and use them in the next step.
Mix the two ounces of corn syrup and the soy lecithin/corn syrup mixture in a small bowl or cup, then add the one tbsp. of sugar and the water and mix well. Heat the mixture briefly in the microwave oven for 15 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 bar into pieces roughly 1/2" square. Barely melt the chocolate pieces in a cereal bowl with the coconut oil in the microwave oven with a 30 second heating cycle on high heat. Then stir the mixture to help melt the chocolate. If necessary, repeat the heating cycle but only for 10 seconds. Stir until the mixture is well combined, then add in and mix/stir/whisk it with the corn syrup mixture until well combined. If necessary, heat the mixture again briefly in the microwave oven and stir until well combined.
Pour the chocolate mixture thinly on to a sheet of parchment paper on a 12"x17" baking sheet. Chill the chocolate in the freezer or deep freeze until it is set, then cut it into small squares about 1/2" on a side using a large butcher knife (which makes the process quick and easy and avoids having the freezer chocolate melt).
Put the cut/broken pieces into a one quart Ziploc® freezer bag and put that into the freezer until you are later ready to add the freezer chocolate to soft frozen ice cream ... or to barely melt it before coating a hard frozen ice cream bar.
Enjoy!