In my former life working in restaurant kitchens, I made a sinfully rich chocolate sorbet that was a favorite on my dessert menus. This summer while I was obsessing over things to make into popsicles, I thought that my chocolate sorbet base would make an excellent candidate for the molds. My recipe was scaled for large production and with the summer heat peaking, I was just too lazy to scale it down. I turned to the recipes of David Leibovitz for a recipe that would be satisfactory to me. The ingredients he used were identical to that of my own recipe, and there was a comfort level in knowing that his recipes consistently work out pretty well. I was actually hoping that his recipe would be slightly less chocolaty than mine, but as luck would have it, it was spot on. Making it into popsicles worked out as I had hoped, but be warned that this is no fudgsicle. It is a serious dark chocolate lover's delight.
| Bittersweet Chocolate Popsicles | |
| Makes 10 standard size popsicles or 1 quart of processed sorbet. | |
| Adapted from The Perfect Scoop (Ten Speed Press; 2007) by David Leibovitz | |
| 2 1/4 cup | water |
| 1 cup | sugar |
| 3/4 cup | unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder |
| pinch | salt |
| 6 ounces | bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, finely chopped |
| (Vegans be sure to use a chocolate that is not made with milk or milk solids. Cocoa butter is a milk product) | |
| 1/2 teaspoon | vanilla extract |
| In a large saucepan, whisk together 1 1/2 cups of the water with the sugar, cocoa powder, and salt. Bring to a boil, whisking frequently. Let it boil, continuing to whisk for 30-60 seconds. | |
| Remove from the heat and stir in the chopped chocolate until it’s melted, then stir in the vanilla extract and the remaining 3/4 cup water. | |
| Chill the mixture thoroughly, then pour into popsicle molds or freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. | |
| If you have neither popsicle molds or an ice cream processor, improvise with ice cube trays or small paper cups. Use aluminum foil over the top of the trays or cups and carefully poke the wooden sticks through. For those of you who prefer to avoid the use of aluminum, you will need to use something to hold the sticks in place and foil works best. | |
