Smores Ice Cream

Well I found out right at the end of it, but yesterday (August 10th) was national Smores day.  How I missed this memo I'm not sure. Ironically, and blissfully unaware of this pending holiday, we actually tried to make smores ice cream last week, so I thought I'd post about it now.

Our first attempt at trying to make smores ice cream

What's not to love about ooey gooey marshmallows, and melted chocolate sandwiched between two crunchy graham crackers? Girls scouts and campers everywhere agree it's the perfect end to an evening spent around a campfire.

Traditional smores in double-decker fashion             My oldest enjoying a smore around the campfire

When you think about smores I think it's the triple flavor combination that really makes them pop. Now, how to incorporate that into an ice cream is the trick.  I can easily add chocolate pieces, and even a marshmallow flavor might work, but if I add plain old graham crackers they would for surely turn to mush, right?  So then it hit me, what about Golden Grahams cereal?

 
Well it was worth a try so here is what you will need: (Printable recipe click here)

2 3/4 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup of marshmallow cream

1 cup mini chocolate chips (or chopped up regular chocolate chips)
1 cup of golden grahams cereal, smashed
1/2 cup of torn up mini marshmallows

First mix the sugar with the whole milk in a bowl. Blend with an electric mixer for 1-2 minutes until sugar is dissolved. Add 1 cup of marshmallow cream and mix (will be lumpy)  Add in heavy cream and teaspoon of vanilla and stir.

Mix all of the wet ingredients together - the marshmallow fluff was lumpy here and there

Pour mixture into your 2-Quart Ice Cream Maker.  Make sure the inner canister has been chilled in the freezer for 12-24 hours before.  Turn the machine on for 20 minutes.

The ice cream seems so naked this way, but use this 20 minutes wisely and chopped up your "add ins".  Most of the time, you want your add ins smaller than a chocolate chip and mini chips are recommended.  Since I didn't have any on hand, I just used my pampered chef hand chopper and made my own "mini" chips.

Not so pretty, but slightly smaller chocolate chips

Then we took 1 cup of golden grahams cereal and smashed them up ligthly in a zip top baggie.  Don't smash the smithereens out of them, leave some chunks here and there.

Then, last minute, I got all crazy, and throwing cautionary measurements to the wind, I also quickly tore up some mini marshmallows, maybe 1/2 cup worth.

Now 20 minutes have passed on the ice cream machine, so you can add in all your nummy extras.

Smores ice cream comes to life before your eyes!

Give it an extra 5 minutes to blend all the ingredients together.

This recipe is a bit on the "full" side, and your ice cream will come up right to the top of the machine.

It is still in the "soft serve" stage at this point.  You can of course eat it now, but we like to pour it into another container and freeze it for at least 6 hours, sometimes over night. Serve them in cones or in bowls and enjoy your special treat around a cozy fire near you.

Smores ice cream and fire light.  Sigh, what a perfect combo.

All in all this was pretty awesome.  We we able to capture all three smores flavors inside the ice cream.  Be in noted the golden grahams cereal held up pretty good.  It was crunchy the first day but got more mushy as time went on.  I think it fared better than if we had added plain graham crackers in.  There were still chunks of graham flavor at the end, even though it was not crunchy anymore.  The chocolate and marshmallows were the hero of this batch.  I think for a first attempt, we did pretty good!