Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream

There is nothing better than cooling off on a hot summer weekend with a delicious homemade chocolate ice cream recipe!

We've partnered with Direct Energy to bring you this delicious recipe. Having family and friends over in the back yard, hearing the kids all have the time of their lives, and eating yummy meals together are just some of the reasons why we love weekends during the summer.

Summer Memories Making Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream

For this recipe we used an ice cream maker! Let me tell you, they are well worth the investment. Not only is homemade ice cream so much better tasting than store bought, but actually making the ice cream is such a fun memory to have with your family. We all get involved with the whole process of picking the flavors and toppings to actually helping make it in the ice cream maker!

I have so many memories as a kids of staying up late on summer nights playing with my family and neighborhood friends, cooking good food all weekend with my parents, and having a blast while doing it all! I want my kids to have memories just like that. So we try and make an effort to have family/friend get togethers almost every weekend.

Homemade chocolate ice cream is not the quickest recipe in the world and your ice cream maker will be running for at least an hour, but it is worth it. It is also made easier for us to make this recipe on the weekend because we have Direct Energy's Free Weekend Plan!

Basically, what that means is that from 6pm on Friday to 11:59PM on Sunday we have FREE electricity. So we don't get charged for running our ice cream maker on the weekends and also don't get charged for our heating and cooling with kids running in and out of the house playing!

This energy plan is what we have always had with Direct Energy and our 3 bedroom house has never had an electricity bill more than $120 and that was a high month! We typically run around a $90 month. It's awesome! It is open to all Texas customers which makes it the only electricity plan in the whole state that offers that many free hours of electricity.

They also offer a really cool tool called Direct Your Energy where you can see what you are using the most energy on in your household. Here is a screenshot of my energy usage for March-April:

So from here I can adjust what I am using during the week that is costing me so much and switch to using it on the weekends since we have the Free Weekends Plan!

How to Make Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream

Okay, now down to the homemade ice cream tutorial. This recipe will make about 3 1/2 quarts of ice cream.

Ingredients:

4 cups half n half

4 cups heavy whipping cream

3 cups sugar

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

4 tablespoons chocolate syrup

3 egg yolks

Also, you will need rock salt and ice for your ice cream maker. It is probably best to refer to your owners manual to see how much of each you will need since ice cream makers are different sizes.

Directions:

1. Combine heavy whipping cream and half n half into a pan and heat it up until just before it boils.
2. While it is heating, combine the sugar, cocoa powder, and egg yolks.
3. Gradually add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients as they are heating.
4. Cook for 15 minutes.
5. Mix in the chocolate syrup and then chill the mixture in the fridge for several hours. The longer you chill the mixture the better, but just be sure that it is cold before you pour it into the ice cream maker.
6. Follow the directions on your ice cream maker for how to turn the mixture into delicious homemade chocolate ice cream.

When the chocolate ice cream was almost done in the ice cream maker we threw in some peanut butter chips to add more flavor into the ice cream. You could add chocolate chips to make double chocolate chip ice cream!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Direct Energy. The opinions and text are all mine.

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