David Lebovitz’s Buttercrunch Toffee Ice Cream

When I first browsed through David Lebovitz’s ice cream cookbook The Perfect Scoop, I was immediately attracted to his recipe for Buttercrunch Toffee. This toffee, meant to serve as an ice cream topping, is not your usual tooth-cracking candy that sends you immediately to the dentist. Instead, I would describe it as a soft layer of chocolate and almonds with a slight crunch to it. Leave it to David Lebovitz to invent the perfect combination of flavors to enhance your ice cream experience!

The author of eight cookbooks, David spent thirteen years honing his skills at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, before moving to Paris in early 2000. His blog Davidlebovitz.com features delicious recipes, as well as dishing up interesting tidbits about life in Paris.

The Buttercrunch Toffee

Making the Buttercrunch Toffee is pretty straight forward: first heat the butter, water and sugars to 300 F. then spread the mixture over an 8-inch circle of chopped roasted almonds. The softened chocolate is then spread on top, followed by a second layer of roasted almonds.

Once cooled, chop up the toffee, then add it to your favorite ice cream (vanilla for me)!

Making the Ice Cream without an Ice Cream Maker

The easiest thing to do is to use store-bought ice cream for this recipe, however I decided to go the extra mile and make mine from scratch. Don’t have an ice cream making machine? Then here’s a little tutorial on how to make ice cream without one!

First, place ice cubes and ‘ice cream salt’ in a large bowl to make an ice bath; ratio of ice to salt should be about 4:1. (The salt helps to slow down the melting of the ice). Then place a smaller metal bowl inside the larger one and add the cream, milk, sugar, salt, and vanilla essence.

Using electric beaters, mix the ingredients on low speed for 5 minutes, then change to high speed for remaining 5 minutes. Mixture should look like whipped cream. Then cover the outside of both bowls with plastic wrap and place in freezer for at least one hour.

Remove both bowls from freezer and beat again for at least 5 minutes until mixture turns into consistency of ‘soft-serve’ ice cream. Freeze for 5-24 hours until mixture hardens to desired level.

Enjoy!