stracciatella ice cream

This stracciatella ice cream is incredibly luscious and silky smooth. It’s a simple eggless ice cream, brimming with fresh milky flavor and crispy bits of dark chocolate.

This ice cream is absurdly plush for an eggless ice cream. If you’ve ever had standard Philadelphia-style ice cream, you probably love the fresh flavor but aren't sold out on the texture.

Without the emulsifying help from eggs, ice cream can get awfully icy and hard. 

But here’s the good news! There are all sorts of natural emulsifiers and stabilizers that, when used the right way, can make a silky smooth ice cream. After a lot trials, I’ve landed on a winning combination of dry milk, corn starch, and corn syrup.

The result is an ice cream that is so silky, luscious, and unbelievably smooth! If you’re curious about how these all work together, keep reading! Otherwise trust the recipe and you won’t be disappointed.

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what is stracciatella ice cream?

Stracciatella is basically fancy chocolate chip ice cream.

In Italy, it's traditionally made by drizzling melted chocolate into the gelato while it churns. This produces thin and crispy shards of chocolate throughout the gelato. The downside of doing this at home is twofold: it makes a mess in the machine, and it can melt the ice cream during churning (which will result in a hard and icy texture).

I have a simpler method.

Melt chocolate, spread it into a thin layer, let it harden, and crumble that sheet of chocolate into tiny, thin shards. Keep the chocolate pieces cold until the very end of churning and mix them in. Viola!

Crispy chocolate pieces spread throughout a deliciously smooth and luscious ice cream.

I take it one step further, though.

I melt the chocolate with coconut oil. This lowers the melting point of the chocolate so it will be crispy when frozen, but not rock hard. And it will quickly melt in your mouth and release all the delicious chocolate flavors.

what's the difference between stracciatella ice cream and gelato?

This recipe is more of a stracciatella gelato than an American-style ice cream!

Gelato differs from American ice cream in a few important ways:

Gelato uses no eggs, it’s lower in fat (from a higher ratio of milk to cream), and it’s churned more slowly to produce a dense and silky texture.

American ice cream is fluffier and richer: it has eggs, higher amount of cream, and a faster churn speed (that incorporates more air). 

ingredients:

how to make stracciatella ice cream:

1. Melt chocolate with coconut oil, spread into a thin layer, and freeze.
2. Break chocolate into crispy shards.
3. Combine sugar and milk powder; set aside. Whisk together cornstarch and a splash of milk; set aside.
4. Bring remaining milk, cream, corn syrup and salt to a boil.
5. Whisk in milk powder/ sugar mixture and boil for 2 minutes.
6. Whisk in cornstarch slurry and simmer until thickened, about 3 minutes
7. Strain, cover with plastic wrap, and chill overnight.
8. Churn in an ice cream maker until a soft-serve consistency. Mix in chocolate shards.
9. Transfer to loaf pan and freeze until firm.
10. Enjoy!

why this is the best recipe for stracciatella ice cream:

There’s more science involved in making super smooth eggless ice cream than you might think. You could just whip up heavy cream and some sugar and call it good, but it won’t be nearly as silken as this.

If you want to learn the ins and outs of why this recipe works, keep reading!

Half milk, half cream: I’ve landed on equal parts milk and cream for the best balance of dairy flavor and richness. Higher levels of cream (or all cream) can be overly decadent and will leave an unpleasant greasy film in your mouth.

No eggs: For the best stracciatella ice cream, I love the emphasis on pure dairy and crispy dark chocolate. Custard ice cream bases detract from this focus. 

Dry milk powder: Milk proteins are emulsifiers just like egg yolks. While there’s protein present in the milk and cream we use, adding more to the mix doubles down on this effect. We boil the milk powder for at least 2 minutes to unravel the proteins. Then they bind to water and fat so when frozen, the ice crystals stay teeny tiny and imperceptible on your tongue. That translates into smooth and creamy ice cream.

Cornstarch: This starch functions as an all-important stabilizer in eggless ice creams. Cornstarch soaks up water and forms a gel when cooked, so the water molecules stay in place: small, separate, “stabilized”. In essence, a stabilizer locks water in place and thus thickens the base, which makes extra-smooth ice cream (no big ice crystals). It also helps protect ice cream from the freeze-thaw cycles that happen in the freezer. Smooth ice cream, for longer! 

Corn syrup: This is a readily available form of glucose syrup that helps soften ice cream. Glucose (monosaccharide) binds with twice as much water as sucrose (disaccharide) and when it binds, it lowers the freezer point. This gives ice cream a soft, scoopable consistency. It’s also less sweet! If you don’t want to use corn syrup, skip it and just use 1 cup of granulated sugar instead. The ice cream will be a little bit harder and sweeter.

A few more tips:

• Use a large saucepan. When the milk and cream boil, they can double in volume and can easily overflow a smaller pot. And that makes a sad mess on the stove.
• If you're feeling lazy, skip the straining step. It's an insurance policy for SUPER SMOOTH ice cream, but not a requirement.
• Freeze a loaf pan before churning so when you’re ready to scrape the ice cream into a container, it stays extra cold.
• Keep the chocolate shards frozen! The amount of coconut oil mixed in means it will be a soft and melty mess at warm room temperature. It's the perfect consistency when frozen, in ice cream. Keep it in the freezer until the end of churning, then dump it in and proceed with the recipe!
• If you're on the market for a simple and reliable ice cream maker, I use this one and love it.

more ice cream recipes to try:

black walnut ice cream

buttermilk ice cream

cookie butter ice cream

coffee ice cream

lavender ice cream

no-churn oatmeal ice cream

pumpkin ice cream

rum raisin ice cream

toasted coconut ice cream

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