Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream

Parry and I experimented with several homemade ice cream recipes with the ice cream maker he got for his birthday the summer of 2011. Among them were a curry ice cream, basil/lemon balm sorbet and this one for hazelnut ice cream. The following recipe is so simple but so amazingly creamy and intense in flavor as to seem almost to be a Gelato.

Ingredients:

370 grams Nutella
410 grams evaporated milk
1/4 cup hazelnut syrup
hazelnuts, toasted and chopped

Pre-freeze the bowl of your ice cream maker according to the manufacturers instructions.

Combine the Nutella and evaporated milk in a saucepan. Heat on medium-low until Nutella is melted and thouroughly blended into the milk.
Remove from the heat and add in the hazelnut syrup. Whisk until completely incorporated.
Pour into a bowl and refrigerate several hours or overnight until well chilled.
Process in ice cream machine. When ice cream is just about done, add in the toasted, chopped hazelnuts.
Freeze in freezer.

Swiss Hazelnut Torte with Chocolate Hazelnut Frosting

When we were in Switzerland in 1992, the mother of our dear friend Thomas Caratsch, made this torte for us. Parry loved it so much that she gave us the recipe. Parry and Walt went on to win the award of "Best European torte" in a cake contest in New Jersey with this recipe.

The original traditional recipe called for a mocha frosting but we have updated it to add to the hazelnut theme.

Here then is the original recipe for the Hazelnut Torte with an updated chocolate hazelnut frosting.

Ingredients:

6 Egg yolks
200-250 grams sugar
1/2 package vanilla sugar
150 grams hazelnuts, ground (3/4 pound whole nuts)
30 grams flour
30 grams potato flour or corn starch
6 Egg whites

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease and flour 9" spring form pan.
Beat egg yolks and sugar with electric mixer on medium til light and thickened (about 5 minutes).
Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
Add egg yolk mixture to dry ingredients and beat on medium til blended.
In a separate medium bowl (preferably a copper bowl) beat egg whites to stiff peaks.
Gently fold egg whites into rest of mixture until well blended.
Pour batter into spring form pan and bake for 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Cool on rack. When completely cooled remove from spring form pan.
Frost with a chocolate butter cream frosting (see note below).
Garnish with coarsely chopped hazelnuts.

For Frosting:

Make a chocolate butter cream frosting adding Nutella until desired consistency and flavor is obtained.