Chocolate Malt Ice Cream

Ice cream is the definitive summer treat. It beckons from the I-shouldn't shelves of the frozen food section, from tubs of sherbet to boxes of ice cream bars. Lone pints are especially sinful, from Haagen-Dazs banana split and Ben & Jerry's coffee-toffee crunch to seasonal musts such as Trader Joe's pumpkin. McConnell's and Bennett's anchor LA's local market, but in our urban home, the favorite is Doctor Bob's. Each year we visit Doctor Bob's creamery on the LA Fairgrounds while attending the LA County Fair, for a heaping cone of cappuccino crunch to scarf onsite, and a pint or two to take home.

It's not that far a journey from a simple bowl of ice cream to a party vat of eggnog. Nogs are their own chapter in drink history, from pewter bowls celebrating Colonial holidays to single whips in Jazz Age bars. Once such nog was made with whiskey and eggs, touted as a health tonic in that peculiar bend of bar service that also gave us the prairie oyster, where bartenders adjunct the office of local chemist. In the late 1800's, a milkshake was that whiskey eggnog, and you consumed it not at a soda fountain but at a public house.

The local chemist was also the local pharmacist who was also the local soda jerk. Somewhere between the surges of popularity of the Temperance movement and crazy waters, which are not unrelated, the milkshake migrated from the bar to the soda fountain. It transformed from a whiskey tonic to milk mixed with flavored syrup: milk, shaken. Those first milkshakes were shaken by hand. In 1911 Hamilton Beach sent the drink mixer to market, and in 1922 the electric blender joined it. All that churning may very well be what got someone to think about introducing ice cream to shaken milk, but there was also a much more fundamental reason: flavor. And that's how malt gets shaken into the milkshake.

Back at the intersection of bartender and soda jerk, two pharmacists developed a malt powder to be used to enrich milk drinks, specifically as a fortified product for infants, children, and the elderly. Horlick's Malted Milk was a powder made of barley, wheat, and malt, available as loose powder or as pressed tablets at the local pharmacy. Malted Milk was also available at the soda counter as malted milk, a concoction of milk, chocolate syrup, and Malted Milk powder. Historically at a Walgreen's in Chicago, a local legend soda jerk added ice cream to malted milk to make a malted milkshake. When ice cream was introduced into the shaken milk, it became the milkshake as we and our brain freeze know it now. And a milkshake made with Malted Milk became, simply, a malted, first as an official offering on the Walgreen's soda fountain menu, eventually as the menu cornerstone, and namesake, of the malt shop.

Malt shops were the chain coffeehouse hangouts of their time, which peaked in the 1940s and 1950s. People, notably teenagers, met to socialize amongst amenities that combined elements of soda fountain, ice cream parlor, and hamburger stand, modernized with music. Malt shops presaged chaperoned fraternization of every kind from sock hop gyms to beach surf shacks. There is something sweet and nostalgic about the malt shop, evoking images of jukeboxes and jitterbugging, sweater sets and saddle shoes, twin straws for Betty and Veronica.

That sweet nostalgia could not be made more manifest than in a bowl of chocolate malt ice cream. Summer is just so right for ice cream, and chocolate malt is so right for the old-fashioned pleasures of summer. It's always a hit when I bring ice cream to summer cookouts; the favorites are peach and chocolate malt. Chocolate malt ice cream is custardy in the way of old-fashioned ice cream, the malt providing a toasty note to underpin rich chocolate. Click here for my recipe for peach ice cream, and below is the recipe for accompanying malt shop nostalgia with the old-fashioned flavor of chocolate malt ice cream.

Chocolate Malt Ice Cream

Be sure to use the pure form of malted milk powder; click here for one source. Click here to learn the ice cream maker we use in our urban kitchen.

2 large eggs
3/4 cups granulated sugar
1-1/2 cups whole milk
1-1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/3 cup malted milk powder

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• Mix cocoa and malted milk powder and cinnamon in a small bowl; place within reach.
• Break the eggs into a large metal or ceramic bowl.
• Whisk eggs until frothy.
• Whisking constantly, add sugar in a thin stream until the mixture is pale and thick.
• Whisking constantly, add milk and whipping cream until thoroughly mixed.
• Add the powder mixture to the ice cream mixture. Gently stir the mixture until the powder is incorporated.
• Pour ice cream mixture into prepared ice cream canister. Freeze ice cream according to manufacturer's instructions.
• Once the ice cream is fully processed according to manufacturer's instructions, cover the canister with its lid or a double layer of plastic wrap. Store in the freezer until ready to serve.

Resources

Peach Ice Cream

Green Tea Ice Cream

Spumoni