No-Churn Hot Chocolate Pretzel Ice Cream

I have made this no-churn ice cream many different ways now. Root beer float, lemon, apple pie, savannah butter-mint. It’s a very versatile recipe, considering how simple it is. But I’ve not done a chocolate based one yet! When I found some old hot chocolate packets in my pantry and Googled “what to bake with hot chocolate mix” and found ice cream was one of the suggestions, well… it was obvious what needed to be done. Sometimes, the internet can be helpful. I will concede that. Sometimes. And now if someone ever Googles “No-Churn Hot Chocolate Pretzel Ice Cream,” maybe they’ll find this recipe. It all keeps going in circles.

This is, of course, part of my “pantry clean out” challenge. And it is still leading to some new ideas! I would probably have thought of doing a recipe like this eventually, but it has forced the issue!

I’m aware of the argument that if you make hot chocolate cold, then it’s just chocolate milk. So is this just chocolate ice cream? Maybe. But… there’s something a little extra in the hot chocolate flavor. Something about the contents of hot chocolate mix give it a specifically hot chocolate flavor. Extra milky, a little sweeter.

I used to love ordering the frozen hot chocolate at Books-a-Million. I think I only ever had it maybe twice, but it stuck with me. I actually thought they were out of business, but they’re not! Maybe I’ll trek out to the Books-A-Million near me and order a frozen hot chocolate. And probably be underwhelmed. But my point is: in my experience, cold hot chocolate is different than just chocolate milk.

My mom and I recently watched the New Years’ Bake Off episode that brought back all the old Scottish bake off participants. Their technical challenge was to bake shortbread with no recipe. This is super easy when you know the ratio is 3 parts flour, 2 parts butter, 1 parts sugar. And that you bake it low and slow. But when you don’t know that, obviously things can go haywire. So it was entertaining to see them stumble through and look for the ratios.

I figured I would try to make shortbread in that classic, straightforward way, but then substitute the flour for pretzel flour. Mainly because I am doing my pantry clean out, and want to get rid of my bag of pretzels. But also because… it sounded delicious.

The idea didn’t execute exactly how I wanted. It wasn’t a total flop. But the shortbread was verrry crumbly. I think some regular flour needs to be used in addition to the pretzel flour, and I could probably sift out some of the larger pretzel crumbs. I may keep workshopping it, because it sure did taste good.

But for now, I just broke up the crumbly shortbread and put it in this ice cream!

To keep track of the “pantry clean-out” challenge: this recipe used up a bag of pretzels, half a chocolate bar, and four packets of hot chocolate powder! It’s also ice cream, so I don’t need to eat it all within a week. A win-win! I am starting to feel like my pantry is getting less chaotic already. I still need to start working through all that quinoa though…

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