Strawberry ice cream with Chocolate Balsamic Fudge Sauce

Despite the fact that almanac says that Fall season has officially arrived, the weather here in Southern California continues to mimic Summer weather with temperatures in the 80's. I decided to make ice cream, and since my daughter loves everything that involves strawberries, I decided to make strawberry ice cream. Since you could google any number of strawberry ice cream recipes, I wanted to make my recipe original and a little bit more sophisticated, so I came up with this balsamic chocolate sauce.  I absolutely love balsamic cream sauce, especially drizzled over strawberries. Talk about an easy dessert!  It absolutely doesn't get better and easier than pre made balsamic creamdrizzled over fresh strawberries! If you don't have a bottle of balsamic cream in your pantry definitely run out and get one, but first try this fudge sauce. The first time I tried to make this sauce, I burned the vinegar, so be forewarned that this isn't one of those recipes, that you can put on the stove and walk away from. You really have to watch the vinegar, because it can go from perfectly fine to burnt in a matter of seconds. With that said this is pretty easy to make once you get past reducing the balsamic vinegar. I decided to use Organic corn syrup in this recipe. It's not one of my favorite things to use, but I didn't want a sauce that would get hard once it touched the cold ice cream. The corn syrup prevents it from doing so. If you want a crackling hard sauce then by all means leave out the corn syrup. The corn syrup that I is used is Organic, and it is not High Fructose corn syrup--big difference, so make sure you don't get the latter, read the bottle!

Prep Time: 1 minute

Cook Time: 7-10 minutes

Total time: 11 minutes

Ingredients for Chocolate Balsamic Fudge sauce:

3 ounces of bittersweet dark chocolate (I used 60%)

1/2 cup of a good balsamic vinegar

2.5 Tablespoons of maple syrup or a sweetener of your choice

1 Tablespoon of butter

2 Tablespoons of organic corn syrup

Ingredients for ice cream:

1.5 cups of organic milk

2 cups of organic cream

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1cup of chopped strawberries

3/4 cup of maple syrup or sweetener of your choice

5 egg yolks

Directions for sauce: 

Add the balsamic vinegar to a sauce pan, and bring to a boil. Once boiling lower the heat to simmer and cook until the vinegar thickens and reduces by half. Turn off the fire, add the chocolate corn syrup and butter and whisk until smooth. Serve with the strawberry ice cream, or just some fresh berries.

Directions for ice cream:

 In a sauce pan heat milk, vanilla extract, and 1 cup of cream and maple syrup to just below a boil-- do not let boil! Turn off the fire, slowly add 1 cup of the hot mixture to the egg yolks whisking so that the eggs don't scramble. Slowly whisk the egg mixture into the hot mixture still in the pan. Immediately add the remaining cream to the pan and turn the fire on to medium low. Stir the mixture
until it thickens and coats the back of the spoon. Turn off the fire, and pour the hot cream into a bowl to cool. Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature, then follow the directions for making ice cream according to your ice cream makers manufacturer.