From Issue 17 of News From The kitchen

This recipe was heavily inspired by these. This time the cacao part is much more ‘crackly’ and the whole thing is very reminiscent of the choc-ices I used to have when I was younger.

Click ‘more’ for full recipe.

For the ice-cream

1 1/2c cashews
1/3c agave
1 vanilla pod, insides scraped out
3c almond milk
3T maca root powder
2t lemon juice
Pinch salt

• Blend all ingredients in a high-speed blender until smooth.
• Pour into an ice-cream maker. Alternatively you can pour into a container and place in the freezer to set hard. Once it’s frozen, cut into chunks and run through a juicer with the blank homogenising plate on. This gets rid of any ice crystals that may have formed.
• When ice-cream is soft enough to work with shape it into a cylinder (a metal ring is great for this) and re-freeze.

For the cacao crackles

1/2c cacao butter
1/4c cacao powder
1/4c agave
3T cacao nibs

• Blend all ingredients except the cacao nibs in a high-speed blender.
• Use a spoon to drop small amounts of the mixture onto a non-stick surface, such as a Paraflexx sheet, to form circles only slightly bigger than the ice-cream cylinders.
• Leave to set hard.

Assembly

• Take the ice-cream cylinders from the freezer and let them soften slightly for a few minutes. That way the next stage will work better.
• Sandwich each of the cylinders between 2 pieces of the cacao crackles. You may want to return them to the freezer at this point so the whole thing freezes together as one.