Chocolate chipotle ice cream

I was totally inspired by a confection called the "firecracker" by Chuao chocolatier. It blows my mind with its awesomeness.

I tend to fly by the seat of my pants for a lot of recipes, so I went out and bought what I wanted -- canned chipotle peppers, Scharffen Berger 70% bittersweet chocolate chunks, some sea salt (I had kosher, but wanted sea), and half and half and heavy whipping cream.

But ice cream is a little picky, so I consulted some recipes, too. There are actually many online recipes for chocolate-chili ice cream, some very labor intensive and others less so. I also looked at my Ben and Jerry's recipe book, but both their chocolate ice creams called for unsweetened chocolate, and I wanted to use my bittersweet.

I went with this recipe, more or less. Except I used 6 oz of bittersweet chocolate and about 8 oz of Mexican chocolate. So it's much more chocolate-intense than the original recipe would have been. Also, instead of adding powdered chiles after the dairy base cooked, I threw a single chipotle pepper in with the cream and cooked it, then threw it all in the blender. I used sea salt in place of the regular salt, and instead of bourbon, I used brandy.

I actually can't tell you how it turned out, as I'm still churning it, but just having tasted the base, I'm quite pleased. You can taste the pepper and there's a slight burn after you taste it (which may dissipate a bit as it gets colder), and the chocolate flavor is very strong (just as I like it).

Tomorrow we'll buy some popping candy to top it, and I'll let you know how it was.