The coronavirus has forced me learn stuff I’m not very good at, such as cooking. See, I eat out almost every day of the week. No kidding! It’s not because nobody cooks for me at home, but because I LOVE eating out, especially at my favorite restaurants.
Today, we’re in different and difficult times. Everyone is on lockdown, meaning I can’t go anywhere near those restaurants. It’s very stressful for me and my family being stuck at home all day, and I can just imagine what other folks are going through. To deal with this stress, I took it upon myself to learn new skills. Naturally, cooking came up somewhere on top of the list.
Some ten years ago, I purchased an ice cream machine from Amazon, the Cuisinart ICE-50BC Supreme Ice Cream Maker to be exact:
My cousins and friends and I would gather on a weekend day to make various flavors of ice cream. I think we made some alcoholic ice cream too. 😉 Alas, we got sick of it after a while and stashed this beautiful, state-of-the-art piece of technology off to gather dust in storage.
Fast forward to 2020, I decided to get back to making ice cream. This time on my own.
Here I’m sharing my most successful attempt, loosely based on the fact that it’s the only one my mom liked. It’s called Tablea Ice Cream.
Tablea (pronounced tah-bleh’-ya) is a Filipino term for ground cacao beans molded into thick discs. Tablea is traditionally used to create hot chocolate, or champorado, a popular rice porridge dish. They look like this:
Since tablea is basically raw, unadulterated chocolate, this ice cream is going to have a nice, dark and bitter flavor.
Let’s get right to it!
Tablea Ice Cream
A delicious dark chocolate ice cream recipe perfect for dessert.
Ingredients
- 5 large egg yolks
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 cups whole milk
- 2 1/2 pcs tablea discs
- 3 tbsp cocoa powder
- 1 1/2 tbsp butter
- 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
Directions
- Whisk the yolks and sugar together in a medium bowl until it turns into a thick and pale yellow mixture.
- In a double boiler, warm the milk and butter over medium heat until it lightly simmers.
- Add in the cocoa powder and the tablea discs and mix until fully dissolved.
- Gradually temper the egg/sugar mixture with the milk/chocolate mixture.
- Return to the double boiler and cook until thickened, stirring slowly and constantly.
- Switch to low heat and add the cream. Stir for 10 more minutes.
- Remove from heat and pour the mixture in a bowl.
- Chill in the refrigerator overnight.
- The next day, add your chilled mixture to the ice cream maker. Churn for 20-25 minutes until it reaches the consistency of ice cream.
- Transfer to a container and freeze at least 4 hours before serving.
Additional Notes
Whisking – You may use an electric hand mixer to whisk the egg yolks and sugar to achieve a thicker and smoother texture in less time.Double Boiler – In lieu of a double boiler, you may alternately use a medium saucepan and a large skillet or frying pan. Place the ingredients in the saucepan and hover it over a skillet with just enough water to touch the bottom of the saucepan. Place a metallic or wooden disc in the skillet to help balance the saucepan.
Tablea – Tablea comes in different shapes and sizes. The ones I used for this recipe were circular but a bit thicker than usual at 3/4 of an inch thick. If your tablea is thinner, add 3 discs initially and dissolve them thoroughly then taste. Add more at half of a disc at a time until you reach the desired chocolate flavor.
Hope you enjoy! If you have any questions or wish to clarify on any part of the recipe, please comment below.
More recipes coming soon.
uau, this looks yummy !
Yep, it turned out pretty good!
Looks delicious!!