Chocolate dipped Mango Ice Cream Bar- 5 ingredients!

Summer means ice cream! I love a good ice cream bar and my favourite has always been Haagen Dazs but recently I’ve been experimenting making ice cream at home. One of the recipe I made is this mango ice cream bar. It’s so easy, only requires 5 ingredients and cost friendly too!

I’ve always been interested in making ice cream at home. However, I don’t want buy an ice cream machine as I have way too many cooking equipment at home. So for this recipe all you need is a hand mixer and you will can make these delicious mango ice cream bar.

Ingredients

There are only 3 ingredients for mango ice cream bar:

• 1 1/4 cups fresh or frozen mango
• 1 cup whipping cream
• 2 tbsp sugar (depending how sweet you want the ice cream bar and how sweet the mangoes are).

There are also 2 additional ingredients if you want to get fancy and have a chocolate shell on the mango ice cream bar. However, it’s delicious without it as well.

• 1 1/2-2 cups cups Semi sweet chocolate chunks chopped
• 1/4 Coconut oil or if you can find it coco butter

You want to use some coco butter or coconut oil because it will help to make the chocolate more flowable and allow for the chocolate to coat the mango ice cream bar. Add in crushed peanuts, pecans, hazelnuts for added crunch!

Substitution

You can substitute for any fruits you like. The one thing to watch out for is to choose a fruit that doesn’t have a lot of water content i.e. watermelon. Or else the ice cream bar will have a lot of ice crystals. Strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, mango, peaches, even cherries are good options.

I would definitely recommend sticking with whipping/heavy cream for the ice cream texture as you need the fat content to have the creaminess even when the popsicle is frozen.

For chocolate shell DON’T USE CHOCOLATE CHIPS, you need the chocolate to be liquid when cooled and not melt the ice cream. If you try using chocolate chip, it will get lumpy as it cools.

Type of popsicle mold

There multiple types of popsicle molds. The most common is the hard plastic with lid and stick fused together.

I’m using silicone which is easier to remove because you can manipulate the mold when taking the popsicle out. For this type of mold, you need to use wooden popsicle sticks.

Choose which ever one that is available to you.

If you are using hard plastic mold, may need to warm the outside with some room temp water to help separate the the popsicle from the mold.

How to make mango ice cream bar

If using fresh mango, cut the mango from the pit. If using frozen mango, let it defrost or pop into the microwave for 30-40s.

Making the mango ice cream bar

1. Blend the mango until it’s smooth.
2. In a bowl combine whipping/heavy cream and sugar and whip with a hand mixer.
3. Once the whipping/heavy cream starts to thicken up, combine the mango with the whipping cream. Continue whipping
4. Once the whipping/heavy cream begins to form a stiff peak, stop. How to tell if you get to a stiff peak: if you lift up the mixer, there should be a little tip left on the whipping cream with a slight curve. If you have a tall straight tip, it’s slightly over mixed.
   • If it’s slightly over mixed, don’t worry, when pouring into the popsicle mold, just use a toothpick or fork to remove some of the air bubbles.

Pouring into popsicle mold

1. Use a piping bag or a plastic zipped bag and cut a corner. Pipe into the popsicle mold.
2. Insert popsicle stick and cover. Freeze for 2+ hours

Serving the popsicles

1. Remove the popsicle from the mold. You may need to slightly warm the mold in order for the popsicle to pop out. Be careful, don’t overheat or the popsicle will melt.
2. Serve as it is.

Chocolate shell

This is purely optional but you can add a chocolate shell on your mango ice cream bar

1. Remove the popsicle from the mold and put onto a baking tray and put it back into the freezer so it doesn’t melt.
2. Combine coconut or cocoa butter with semi sweet chocolate chunks in a microwave safe cup (it has to be deep enough to dip the popsicles in)
3. Heat in the microwave for about 2-3 minutes. Stir.
4. Make sure all the chocolate is melted then let it come to room temperature. The chocolate should not turn solid.
5. Take the popsicles and quickly dip the popsicle in.
6. Let it drip a bit to get rid of the excess.
7. Place onto the baking tray and repeat for all of the popsicles.
8. Freeze for another 20 minutes. Serve.

Important tips:

• It’s important not to add any liquid to this recipe like milk or water as this will create ice crystals.
• If you want to decrease whipping cream, reduce the whipping cream by half and add in greek yogurt (it has to be greek yogurt because you don’t want any excess liquids).
• Don’t over whip the heavy cream, it will introduce too many big air bubbles and cause the final product to have large air bubbles
• If you accidentally over whipped, just pipe into the popsicle mold and then use a toothpick to swirl around and remove the air bubbles.
• When trying to remove the popsicle from the mold, make sure to warm it up slightly especially if your mold is hard plastic. Don’t heat it too much as it will melt the ice cream bar.
• If you can, don’t use chocolate chip as it has stabilizers that prevents the chocolate from fully melting and it will become lumpy when cooling down.
• Don’t skip the coconut oil or cocoa butter, it will help to make the chocolate shell crisp and also stays liquid so your shell isn’t too thick. It also helps to make the chocolate stay liquid for longer so it doesn’t clump up.
• Make sure when you are dipping the ice cream bar to let the excess drip down or else you will end up with a thick chocolate shell.

Check out some of my other summer recipes:

• Lemon Ice tea
• Cold udon noodles
• Cold chicken salad