Cooking with Klara: Chocolate Ice Cubes

A few weeks ago I was reading the most amazing issue of the Food Network Magazine. What made it so great? It featured the most delicious food known to man: chocolate! (All you chocolate haters can cease reading…now). As I was flipping through from chocolate trivia to cocoa covered steaks (yes, you read that right), I came upon an article titled Milk on the Rocks, featuring these brilliant chocolate ice cubes.

How come I never thought of this? What a fun way for your kids to make chocolate milk! The neighbors would be so jealous in the summertime…they had normal ice cubes, but we had chocolate ones! Abs and I had fun trying out this recipe, and it will definitely be a keeper. So without further ado, here is the recipe.

Ingredients

1 cup whole milk
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa
4 cups semisweet chocolate chips
3 Ice cube trays (full recipe make 2 1/2 dozen ice cubes)

Directions

Start out by bringing the milk, water, sugar, and cocoa to a simmer on the stove. I let Abby mix it all together before putting it over the stove so she didn’t have to worry about burning herself. Be sure to continually mix while the mixture is heating up, as milk tends to burn quite easily.

Once the mixture is simmering, take it off the heat and let your little ones pour in the chocolate chips. Just beware of little snatchers :). Have them take turns mixing the chocolate until all the chips are melted and the concoction is smooth. Now, if you dare, you can let the kids help you pour the chocolate into ice cube trays. A funnel may make this easier. Abby was much more interested in swiping the chocolate as it came pouring down (can you blame her?), so I found it better to entice her away from the chocolate with some play dough.

Now set the trays in the freezer (if you can find room), and let your chocolate ice freeze over night. Tomorrow you should have some delicious frozen chocolate just dying to jump in a big bath of milk!

Note to the wise: use ingredients to the tee! We made the mistake of using milk chocolate chips and, as you can see, the form of our ice cubes suffered for it. I forgot that the extra sugar would impede the chocolate’s ability to freeze (Ever wanted to freeze a bowl of sugar? Don’t. It won’t work).

Moral of the story? Don’t try substituting on this recipe. On the bright side, Abby was still entertained by the melting chocolate ice cubes and spent the majority of the afternoon nursing her precious cup of chocolate milk :)