Ice Cream Sundays - {peppermint bark}

Peppermint bark is one of my favorite holiday treats & the Bachsters and I recently made a batch of it to take to holiday parties and munch on at home.  And as I was eating what must have been my 100th piece of pepperminty goodness, I started to think about how yummy peppermint bark would be as an ice cream.  With that idea in mind, I set to work!

My peppermint bark recipe is from Orangette (here's the link).  If you love candy canes &/or peppermint, it's the best thing ever.  Which I do, and it is.  Anyway, why not take the same components - white chocolate, dark chocolate and peppermint - and turn it into ice cream?  Doesn't that sound fabulous?  Yes, I thought so!

I started with the white chocolate recipe from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop, which is wonderful on its own, but I added 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract....just enough to taste, but not overpower the ice cream.  When the ice cream was finished churning, I added thin layers of bittersweet stracciatella (which makes thin ribbons of hardened chocolate throughout) and the crushed bits of 4 candy canes.

The crushed candy canes disappeared into the ice cream after a while.  So, I would recommend a fresh sprinkling of crushed candy canes over your scoops, right before serving.  And there you have it - peppermint bark transformed into ice cream.  It's Christmas magic!

-Cheryl