Hot Fudge Ice Cream: or, The topping becomes the dessert

You would never know I was cleaning the refrigerator.

Hot Fudge Ice Cream Melt some hot fudge sauce (however much you have on hand) in the microwave. Mix in enough milk to thin it out and make it about the consistency of chocolate milk. If the hot fudge sauce doesn't quite mix in, you may need to microwave a bit. If you want your ice cream a bit sweeter, add canned condensed milk to taste. Stir everything together well. Then freeze in an ice cream machine.

We have a lot of hot fudge sauce leftover from a few previous desserts. Don't ask when I made it or how long it has sat in the refrigerator. I didn't want to waste it.

We also have leftover ganache that has been in the freezer for a year. Did you know that if you seal ganache well enough, you can apparently freeze it forever?

Since hot fudge sauce is nothing but cream and chocolate (or at least, Maida Heatter's recipe is), the way forward seemed simple: melt the fudge and add milk. We also added the partial can of condensed milk that's been in the refrigerator for a few days.

I decided we had our mixture right when it tasted like the oxymoronic yet delicious "frozen hot chocolate." 

As we're finding out, ice cream forgives freehand measuring almost as much as soup does. If it tastes good before you freeze it, it always comes out fine.

Incidentally, I love my new one-quart measuring cup that we are using today. It's perfect for measuring out small batches of things like this, and also an ideal mixing bowl when cooking for one or two. We first used it to make a cup of coffee that meets Book of Cookrye standards.

We have also used it for healthier things, like measuring out the 4 cups of cabbage that go into a frying pan of Mrs. Mary Martensen's sweet-and-sour.

Getting back to our recipe, if so it may be called: it turns out that when hot fudge sauce has been in the refrigerator for a while (again, don't ask how long), it starts to dry out. We had gritty crystals of desiccated fudge in our mixture. I knew they probably would dissolve by the time this had refrigerated overnight (our ice cream machine only works if your starting mix is already cold), but I wanted to take no chances. As we learned with the lotus cream, it's easier to strain ice cream before you freeze it.

Like anyone who makes their own ice cream, I am more than a little partial to a bowl of it right out of the machine--- even if it melts after about twenty seconds.

This tastes like if fudgcicles were made with actual chocolate. You would never have guessed that I made it to clean out the refrigerator. It is so good that it should be on purpose.

In closing, I love when refrigerator-cleaning recipes don't taste like cleaning out the refrigerator. I might even make more hot fudge sauce just to repeat this ice cream.