Coffee Halva Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Name: Coffee Halva Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Prep time: 40 min
Total time: 400 min
Yield: 8 servings (1 generous quart)
Ingredients: 3/4 cup coffee beans (medium or dark roast) ((75 g) ); 1 ½ cups heavy cream ((355 ml) ); 1 ½ cups whole milk ((355 ml) ); ½ cup organic granulated cane sugar ((100 g) ); 1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt; 4 large egg yolks; 3 ounces chopped bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled slightly ((85 g) (1/2 cup)); ¾ cup roughly chopped or crumbled sesame halva ((90 g) )

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Homemade coffee ice cream gets a twist from crumbles of sesame halva and drizzles of bittersweet chocolate stracciatella.

Before we get down to ice cream business, a bit of news about my cookbook(!). First, it has a new cover! And second, we decided to move the release date from April to September in order to put out the best book we could. Alternative Baker: Reinventing Dessert with Gluten-Free Grains and Flours will now come with layflat binding (which is a godsend when you’re trying to work from it in the kitchen, whether or not you have a nifty cookbook holder), as well as better photos, better edits, and the aforementioned shiny new cover. I couldn’t be happier with this decision, and I hope that those of you who have preordered (THANK YOU!) won’t mind the wait. Come September, you’ll be able to hold over 100 brand-new recipes in your hands.

Let’s celebrate with ice cream!

Sesame desserts have been around for ages, but lately there’s been a resurgence of sweet treats made with tahini, halva, and black sesame. The black sesame I can get behind big time, but I’ve had a kind of love/hate relationship with tahini and halva – they both have an intense richness and robust flavor underscored with bitter notes that I used to find hard to take in large doses. My mom used to buy bars of halva swirled with chocolate and I always thought the sesame got in the way of pure, unadulterated sweet goodness.

Cut to last week. Sarah and I were slated to style Melissa Clark’s Flourless Chocolate Cake With Halvah Honey Sauce for the New York Times. No problem, I thought, and picked up ingredients from our local co-op. At least, I picked up everything but the halva. I stood in the sweets aisle for about 20 minutes before finally asking a worker where I could find the bars of sesame sweetness.

“We don’t carry any,” she replied, and went on to explain that the healthy brand had gone out of business and all the others were made with artificial vanilla. (This is why I love our co-op.) Back at home, I spent the better part of an hour on the phone with different grocers explaining what halva is and how to spell it, only to be told I was SOL. Finally Jay suggested checking our tiny neighborhood market whose owner hails from the Middle East.

“Of course we have halva – two different kinds!” he said to my relief, and handed me a 1-pound brick of the stuff.

The cake was delicious – a classic flourless beauty topped with a sauce of cream, tahini, honey, and chopped halva. I wanted to lick the sauce off the spoon forever and ever. I would have happily bathed in it. And it went beautifully with the cake, the toasty sesame playing off rich chocolate the same way that peanut butter does. I was hooked.

Luckily for me and my newfound sesame obsession, I had the better part of a brick of halva left over, and the rich flavor inspired me to pair it with coffee. Thus this ice cream was born.

Loads of crushed coffee beans flavor a classic ice cream base, leaving little flecks and adding loads of flavor. Crumbled halva and drizzled bittersweet chocolate get layered into the churned ice cream. As you’re eating a scoop, you get rich creamy coffee, then toasty-sweet bits of halva, and finally chunks of dark chocolate melting in your mouth and forcing the next bite. The cream and milk round out any rough edges of bitter coffee, chocolate, and halvah, and these strong flavors keep the ice cream from tasting overly sweet or rich. I have a weakness for chunky ice cream, and Jay has a thing for coffee ice cream, meaning that we’ve already worked our way through three batches of the stuff. Not sorry.

Luckily, I now know where to go for my halva fix. I’ve got another sweet sesame recipe in the works, and I’m eyeing this beautiful tahini stracciatella number, too.

Many thanks to Cogworks and Grace Green Beauty for sponsoring The Bojon Gourmet this month! Check out their sites for beautiful wooden serve boards and delectable skin care, respectively.

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*Bojon appétit! For more Bojon Gourmet in your life, follow along on Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest, purchase my gluten-free cookbook Alternative Baker, or subscribe to receive new posts via email. And if you make this chocolate chip ice cream recipe, I’d love to know. Leave a comment and rating below, and tag your Instagram snaps @The_Bojon_Gourmet and #bojongourmet.*

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