and so it came to pass that there was to be an organic valley employee ice cream competition. since i have recently started making my own, and i’m the milk and cream product manager, and we just launched some new, tasty creamers it seemed to make some sense that i actually enter the competition.

truth be told, i thought i had very little chance of winning because, well, i work for a dairy cooperative that employs some very talented ice cream makers ( as it happens, some of those who could/should have won didn’t enter for a variety of time and energy reasons ). but i went for it anyway and made a simple variation on odin’s favorite triple chocolate ice cream. i used our excellent hazelnut half and half instead of the plain, reduced the added sugar to 1/3 cup and didn’t add the milk chocolate chunks at the end, resulting in a double chocolate hazelnut ice cream.

i contemplated going a little fancier and doing a double chocolate candied bacon recipe but decided to keep it simple since this was a “popular vote” competition and i thought most regular folks would cringe at the thought of bacon in their ice cream ( don’t get me wrong, i’m not one those people. ).

turns out, i was almost wrong. one of the entries was a “bacon whiskey” concoction, “smokey and the bandit” ( in the middle of this photo ) that was really excellent, even though it didn’t have enough time to freeze thoroughly and had the consistency of a bacon whiskey milkshake.

and, i must say, the double chocolate rides right up to the line of “over the top” rich chocolishishness ( made with eight egg yolks! ). i mean, right. up. to. the. line. for some folks it could possibly cross the line. in other words, if you’re not Really Into Chocolate you could always ease back on it be just fine.

in the end, my “you really can’t go wrong with a double chocolate” strategy seemed to work, since i somehow ended up with the most votes ( this shot was taken about half-way through voting, but really i did! honest! )!