Chocolate Semifreddo

With the last bit of heavy cream we had, I wanted to make something that didn’t use as many eggs as ice cream. This “semi-frozen” dessert checked that box, and was also made of chocolate, which checked my family’s boxes. Accompanied by a sweet-tart cherry sauce, this was a simple and satisfying Sunday dessert.

The recipe is from Cook’s Illustrated (May 2018). The prep is pretty easy: stirring together vanilla and freeze-dried espresso powder, then chopping chocolate. I didn’t have any bittersweet left (yes, it’s possible to go through 10kg), so I used a mix of milk and unsweetened.

After heating some of the cream, you combine it with the egg mixture, and cook until slightly thickened, then use this hot liquid to melt the chocolate. The remaining cream is whipped and folded in. That’s pretty much it. The whole thing goes into a loaf pan, then frozen for at least 6 hours.

I kew we had to make the accompanying cherry sauce: just frozen fruit macerated in sugar, then cooked down and thickened with cornstarch and liqueur (I used port, because we didn’t have Kirsch).

This was yummy. Most of us couldn’t wait to let the semifreddo thaw a bit, so it was sort of like eating a slab of ice cream. But the nice thing is, even if you let the slices warm up a bit, they won’t melt like ice cream would. The slightly tart cherry sauce was a perfect accompaniment. Highly recommended.