Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream

This is an ice cream for peanut butter lovers. Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream is a rich peanut butter ice cream that has a swirl of chocolate shavings running through it, delivering a great chocolate-peanut butter flavor with creamy ice cream and a slight crunch from the chocolate. It is addictive – and might be even more addictive than the peanut butter cup candies that inspired this flavor combination.

The ice cream starts out with an easy to make peanut butter base. Use a peanut butter that you like the flavor of for this recipe, because you are really going to taste it in the finished product. I used an all natural national brand (Jif All Natural) that I frequently use for baking. There are no eggs in the ice cream base because the peanut butter adds a lot of thickness to the mixture, and plenty of fat to keep the finished ice cream ultra-smooth and scoopable. I also used honey as the sweetener here because it goes so well with peanut butter, and it is easy to whisk in to the no-cook ice cream base.

I churned the peanut butter ice cream in my ice cream maker (and yes, you will want an ice cream maker for the best results with this recipe), then added in the chocolate. Ice cream churned in an ice cream maker typically needs to be frozen after churning to fully firm up, and transferring it from the machine to a storage container is the perfect time to add any mix-ins to a batch of homemade ice cream.

I didn’t want to use chocolate chips in this ice cream because I don’t like big, hard chunks of frozen chocolate in my ice cream (standard chocolate chips are just too big). So instead, I shaved a bunch of milk chocolate into chocolate curls, then layered those very thin pieces of chocolate with the ice cream as I scooped it out of the ice cream maker and into a freezer-safe container to firm up. I used a lot of chocolate shavings in between the layers of ice cream, and the result was not only a great peanut butter and chocolate combination, but also a beautiful chocolate swirl in my ice cream. I used milk chocolate, but you can use milk or dark. I think that shaving the chocolate into rough curls is a fast and easy way to break the chocolate down into small pieces and they have a great texture, but finely chopping the chocolate is an alternative that will work here, too.

Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream
1 1/4 cups milk (any kind)
3/4 cup heavy cream
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup honey
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup very finely chopped or shaved milk chocolate (approx 4-oz)

In a large bowl, whisk together milk, heavy cream, peanut butter, salt, honey and vanilla. Allow mitxure to chill in the fridge for 1 hour before churning.
Pour ice cream base into ice cream maker and churn according to manufacturers’ directions.
When ice cream has churned, scoop out one third of it into a freezer-safe container. Add in about 1/3 cup of the chocolate shavings. Scoop out another third of the ice cream and spread it onto the layer of chocolate. Top that with another 1/3 cup of the chocolate shavings. Scoop out remaining ice cream and top it with remaining shavings. Cover container and freeze until firm, at least 2-3 hours.

Serves 4-6