Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream: Made With Fresh Mint
A refreshing no-churn mint chocolate chip ice cream made with fresh mint leaves. With only four ingredients and no eggs needed, it’s relatively simple to make. The fresh mint imparts such a vibrant minty flavour. It’s irresistible.
Here in the UK, fresh mint is at its prime in May and June. If you harvest it regularly though, you can keep it going throughout the summer. We grow peppermint (Mentha x piperita) and spearmint, also known as Moroccan mint (Mentha spicata).
How To Use Fresh Mint
Peppermint is great for making teas and flavouring potatoes and peas as they boil. But spearmint is the most useful. It has gorgeous warm and sweet minty notes that makes it ideal for chopping into salads and flavouring syrups. It’s also the best one to use for this mint chocolate chip ice cream. Handily, it’s the one you’re most likely to find in supermarkets.
Mint has such a fresh taste that it’s one of my favourite summer herbs. It has a particular affinity with potatoes, peas, broad beans, cucumber, watermelon and strawberries. I use it a lot in summer salads such as this Middle Eastern chickpea salad. However, I also like it to flavour summer drinks and desserts like blackcurrant fool and strawberry rose mint fizz.
Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
I absolutely adore this no-churn ice cream recipe. It’s super easy to make, no fancy equipment needed and it tastes fantastic. I have a basic recipe, which I then adapt to include whatever ingredients and flavours I fancy. This time it’s mint choc chip.
For this recipe you only need four ingredients: cream, condensed milk, chocolate and mint. It’s slightly more involved that your average no-churn ice cream because you need to steep the mint in the cream for a few hours to impart that fresh minty flavour.
Once you’e done that, you need to strain the mint then cool the cream. So this is not a recipe you can do straight off the cuff. Some planning is required.
Although condensed milk is sweet, I use much less of it than similar no-churn ice creams. It’s still plenty sweet enough and because of all the cream, it’s most definitely indulgent.
Mint Choc Chip Ice Cream: Step-by-Step
Although this no-churn mint choc chip ice cream might take a while before you can tuck into it, hands on time is actually very little. You just need to plan ahead and make sure you have room in your freezer.
Step 1. Steep Mint
Place the mint leaves into a medium sized lidded pan, then pour the cream over the top. Heat until the cream is steaming, but try not to let it boil.
Turn off the heat, cover the pan and leave for a couple of hours to steep. The longer you leave the leaves in the pan, the more they’ll impart their flavour.
Step 2. Strain Cream
Strain the cream into a large bowl through a sieve, pressing the leaves down with a spoon as firmly as you can. You want to extract as much of the cream and mint flavour as possible.
Put the cream in the fridge to cool.
Top Tips
For an additional minty burst. Whizz up the steeped leaves in a mini food processor before pressing all of the cream out of them.
The cream needs to be properly cold in order to whip it up. Leave it overnight and you’re almost guaranteed soft peaks in the morning.
Step 3. Chop Chocolate
Meanwhile, using a sharp knife, chop the chocolate as finely as you can. Frozen chocolate goes really hard, so you don’t want big lumps of it in the ice cream.
Top Tips
Use a good quality bar of dark chocolate. You can use milk chocolate if you prefer, but the dark chocolate acts as an excellent foil to the sweet creaminess of the ice cream.
Make sure the chocolate is hard, this will produce finer flakes when you chop it. If it’s a warm day, stick it in the fridge for a couple of hours.
If you use ready bought chocolate chips, you’ll still need to chop them as they’ll most likely be too big. It’s also nice to have different sized pieces in the ice cream.
Step 4. Whip Cream
As soon as the cream is cold, whip it up with electric beaters, a whisk or stand mixer. Stop as soon as the cream has tripled in volume, is light and airy and is thick enough to just about hold its shape. If you over whip cream, it very quickly turns to butter.
You can whisk by hand, but as there’s a lot of cream it’s quite hard work and it can take some time.
Step 5. Add Condensed Milk
Pour in the condensed milk and briefly whip again to combine. The mixture should just about hold its shape.
Step 6. Add Chocolate
Scrape the chocolate chips into the bowl of cream, then gently fold them in until they’re more or less evenly distributed.
Step 7. Freeze
Spoon the minty chocolate cream into freezer proof lidded containers. I filled a 1 litre and a ¼ litre tub with the amount given in the recipe.
Freeze for at least 6 hours before using. It will keep well for about three months.
To make sure the ice cream is soft enough to scoop, remove it from the freezer fifteen minutes before serving.
Top Tip
Use as large a container as you can manage. This makes scooping the ice cream out a lot easier.
How To Make Mint Ice Cream Green
Never trust green coloured mint choc chip ice cream. It’s almost certain to contain green food colouring. It’s really hard to extract the green out of mint, so the most natural colour is cream.
If you really want a green mint ice cream, you can add natural green powders such as spirulina, spinach or matcha. However, they all have quite distinctive tastes and will muddy the pure minty freshness of your mint choc chip ice cream.
I have tried to figure out how to get a nice green colour using the mint leaves, but it’s not easy. If you boil mint leaves they turn brown. You can, apparently, blanch them in boiling water for a couple of seconds, then immediately plunge them into ice cold water to retain the vivid green colour.
But that still doesn’t help me impart the colour into the ice cream. I thought about blending the leaves in a powder blender, but what with? The cream would likely turn to butter and there isn’t enough condensed milk to work in my blender.
In any case, the beauty of this no-churn ice cream is the wonderful velvety mouthfeel. Tiny bits of mint leaf just spoils the texture.
If you steep the leaves for long enough in the cream, you will get a slight green tinge. If you then blend the steeped leaves and press as much as you can through a sieve, you’ll get a slightly more pronounced green tinge, but not by much. To be honest, I don’t think it’s worth the effort.
Other No-Churn Ice Cream Recipes You Might Like
- Bailey’s chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce
- Blackberry ice cream
- Lemon ice cream: only 3 ingredients
- Peach melba ice cream
- Plum, amaretti & white chocolate ripple ice cream
- Strawberry ice cream: two ways
Keep in Touch
Thanks for visiting Tin and Thyme. If you make this mint choc chip ice cream, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. And do please rate the recipe. Have you any top tips? Do share photos on social media too and use the hashtag #tinandthyme, so I can spot them.
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If you’d like more mint recipes, follow the link and you’ll find I have quite a lot of them. All delicious and nutritious, of course.
Choclette x
Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream. PIN IT.
Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream – The Recipe
Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Ingredients
- 30 g fresh mint leaves not including stalks
- 600 ml double cream (heavy cream)
- 200 ml condensed milk
- 100 g dark chocolate
Instructions
- Place the mint leaves into a medium sized lidded pan, then pour the cream over the top. Heat until just steaming, but before it boils. Turn off the heat, cover the pan and leave for a couple of hours (or more) to steep.30 g fresh mint leaves, 600 ml double cream (heavy cream)
- Strain the cream through a sieve, pressing the leaves as firmly as you can to extract as much of the cream and flavour as possible.
- Put the cream in the fridge to cool. The cream needs to be properly cold in order to whip it up.
- Meanwhile, using a sharp knife, chop the chocolate as finely as you can. Frozen chocolate goes really hard, so you don’t want big lumps of it in the ice cream.100 g dark chocolate
- As soon as the cream is cold, whip it up with electric beaters, whisk or stand mixer. Stop as soon as the cream has tripled in volume, is light and airy and is thick enough to just about hold its shape. If you over whip cream, it very quickly turns to butter. You can do this by hand, but as there’s a lot of cream it’s quite hard work and can take some time.
- Pour in the condensed milk and briefly whip again to combine.200 ml condensed milk
- Gently fold in the chocolate chips until they’re more or less evenly distributed.
- Spoon into suitably sized containers. I filled a 1 litre and a ¼ litre tub.
- Freeze for at least 6 hours before using. It will keep well for about three months. Remove from the freezer fifteen minutes before serving.
Notes
Nutrition Estimate
Sharing
I’m sharing this recipe for mint choc chip ice cream with Farmersgirl Kitchen for #CookBlogShare.
Thank you for this fantastic recipe. I followed every detail in your method & really appreciate the time you’ve taken to make this ice cream as fantastic as it is. Perfect for our mint glut. Also thanks for introducing us to the Bodmin herb festival, we live near Looe, & look forward to visiting it!
So pleased you liked the mint choc chip ice cream and thanks for letting us know. I’m envious of your mint glut. Ours hasn’t at all liked the dry weather this year. I’m not sure the Bodmin Herb Festival is still going – we haven’t been for years. But it looks like Bodmin nursery hosts a regular farmer’s market. And it is a proper nursery where they grow their own plants.
My sons all time favourite ice cream when we are out and about. Now I can make it for him at home too. Lovely simple recipe and perfect as I have my own fresh mint in my garden too.
Your son has good taste. It’s my currant favourite ice cream, but I think that’s because mint is in season and I can’t get enough of it at this time of year.
Looking awesome and tasty! I am excited to try this soon!
Thank you. Do let me know what you think when you try it.
I love these flavours, thanks for the simple instructions, I’m sure this will become a favourite.
It’s a great way to use fresh mint if you grow a lot of it. Or even if you don’t!
love this idea of using fresh mint leaves!
Definitely gives an extra dimension. We’ve run out already. Luckily I’ve still got plenty of fresh mint in the garden.
Must be very refreshing with all the fresh mint leaves!
Refreshing and indulgent at the same time. A treat for sure, but a good one.