S'mores, the ultimate chocolate ice cream, savory fruit salad

Developing flavors around texture, letting your ingredients work for you, and how to do a perfect fruit justice

Yello!

This week’s Joshua Tree Farmers Market menu just dropped, and while I do love my children equally, I’m especially excited to share some background on one girlie in particular. Then, to wrap things up, my favorite thing to make when the market produce is just so juicy, it’s almost a crime to not just eat it over the sink.

If you’ve been following along with Nice Dream for awhile now, I’m sure you’ve noticed (and maybe even gotten annoyed) at how one flavor isn’t necessarily locked in, batch to batch. We’ve had Passionfruit Dreamsicle expressed as passionfruit curd swirled into coconut ice cream, passionfruit jelly swirled into vanilla bean ice cream, and passionfruit jelly swirled into coconut ice cream. Nectarine Basil as basil-infused nectarine sorbet, or nectarine sorbet swirled against basil sorbet. Marionberry Crumble with an oat streusel one time, buttery pie crust shards another, and tahini pistachio granola another.

This is because when I’m developing a flavor, I’m usually chasing a very specific memory of texture or flavor, or sometimes even just a feeling. S’mores, as a flavor, is RIPE with memory for many of us. One year, I really wanted to distill a charred marshmallow’s blackened jacket. Another, I really wanted to highlight the gentle sweetness of graham flour. But this year: I’m all about the chocolate.

S’mores circa ‘22! Graham crumbles with rich, nutty, cinnamon-y rouge de bourdeaux flour.

We’ve got our trusty, 72% dark chocolate base, salted marshmallow crème, and a sandy ripple of graham cracker, wait for it, CRUMBS. I’m a huge believer in making your ingredients do the heavy lifting for you. There’s really no amount of sugar, or vinegar, or lemon that will manufacture a perfectly ripe peach, so save yourself the trouble and use the perfect peach; if I want to uplevel a pan of brownies or banana bread, I’ll use add a chopped bar of chocolate that has inclusions, like candied ginger or dried cherries; and in this case, if the graham crackers come processed to a fine dust already for me, GREAT.

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But that doesn’t mean we’re just going to dump and call it a day! Dry crumbs folded into chocolate ice cream and fluffy marshmallow might get totally lost, or worse, read as…dry. So, I took a cue from buttery graham cracker crumb crusts— like at the base of pumpkin pies, cheesecakes, etc— and worked some melted, refined coconut oil and sugar into the crumbs. This wet sand mixture (mmmmm) still reads as sandy, but in a moist way (mmmm) and with a tender crunch.

As for the ‘mallow: when looking to incorporate a marshmallow component— whether in Sweet Potato & Fluff, Jumbo Rocks, Lemon Meringue Pie, or S’mores— I do generally use the same recipe. A marshmallow made with gelatin isn’t vegan (BOO!) and does weepy things when frozen, while fluff stays FLUFFY! (I’ve yet to try an agar-stabilized ‘mallow because I’m so pleased with the fluff, but do use agar for frozen fruit “jams” and ripples in ice cream, so it’s not off the table.) The only thing I might vary is whether the fluff gets lightly torched, and the type and amount of salt added. I went with a flake salt this time, and a good amount of it. It’s a lot of sweet on sweet, and the presence of salt— physical and dissolved— is important in breaking that up. If you’re making this at home and want to save a step, you can definitely just a use a jar of fluff and just salt that gorl up. LMK how it goes.

But wait, weren’t we in pursuit of a chocolate experience? Designing for the taste experience, especially especially with something like ice cream, which is meant to be enjoyed at freezing temps so your taste buds are numbed and dulled, is such a fun and fascinating challenge. In general, when at room temp, ice cream base usually has to read a bit “sweeter” than you’d like. I learned this from Chika at my first kitchen job: when tasting ice cream base, it should be just a *tiny* bit too sweet, so as to make you squint a little. (What this means in brix, or % of sugar in a liquid, is ~30+ for ice creams, and 25-30 for sorbets, but we’ll get into that in another post.) For chocolate specifically, this means doubling up on our chocolate component: melted chocolate and cocoa powder. We want the dense, fudginess that the fat in melted chocolate (cocoa butter in this case) brings, but not so much as to completely mute, deaden the flavor. Cocoa powder, which is basically chocolate minus cocoa butter, brings that PUNCH of chocolate flavor. We’ve found that using both high-fat cocoa powder (34/36%) and 72% dark chocolate brings us the best of alllllll the worlds. (I want to caveat this with the fact that these ingredients in these proportions are designed to work specifically with our vegan oat-coconut base; so it’s not a hard/fast rule across all chocolate ice cream, let alone chocolate uses out there!)

We further heighten the density, fudginess, and intensity of chocolate by echoing with similarly fudgy marshmallow, and to have a chewy/crunchy element (hey, graham cracker crumbs). As you’re masticating, air comes in through your nostrils and your teefies, and you’re tasting the flavor all over again. YUM.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Onto the recipe.

S’mores Recipe

Yield: about 2 pints / 8 servings

Xanthan gum prevents ice crystals from forming, but when making ice cream at home and in a smaller batch size, this is not as big an issue, so is optional. For the non-dairy milk in our base, we use Oatly Full-Fat here— it has the most ideal amount of protein (9g/cup) and fat (3g/cup) while having a relatively neutral flavor— but feel free to play with other milks, as long as the protein/fat content is similar. When making ice cream flavors with inclusions, always make a little test spoon before packing: combine the churned ice cream with your room temp (better yet, cold) sauces, cookies, fillings, etc. on a spoon, taste, and adjust seasoning (salt) and ratios to taste.