Hotel Chocolat is launching its much-anticipated “Ice Cream of the Gods” at its Westquay store, with complimentary sample tastings available on Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st August.
For anyone who hasn’t yet tried the brand’s signature ice cream, now’s the perfect excuse. Hotel Chocolat is inviting customers to experience what it describes as “astonishingly creamy” ice cream, infused not just with chocolate, but with pure, crushed, roasted cacao nibs.
The story behind the new treat is one of patience and a bit of culinary invention. “It took us a while to finally make a Hotel Chocolat ice cream because we didn’t want it to be ordinary,” explains co-founder Angus Thirlwell. “We wanted something no one had ever tasted before, so we went back to the cacao bean.”
Instead of following the well-trodden path of making a standard chocolate ice cream, Hotel Chocolat’s chef David Demaison started from scratch. He crushed roasted cacao nibs into a fine powder and blended them with rich Jersey milk and cream. The mix is left to infuse, first for a few hours, then overnight, and finally after 48 hours, the cream is transformed. “The cream changes to a subtle taupe colour as the nibs infuse,” says Thirlwell. “You might think it was vanilla, but then you taste it and realise it really is something else.”
While chocolate ice creams with cacao nibs are nothing new, infusing cacao directly into the cream is a novel approach. The result, according to Hotel Chocolat, is an ice cream worthy of its name. The recipe is dubbed “Ice Cream of the Gods” – a nod to the scientific name of the cacao plant, Theobroma cacao, meaning ‘cacao, food of the gods’.
Customers at Westquay can sample the ice cream for free this weekend, or opt for a full-size portion topped with salted caramel sauce for £3.45. It’s a bold new step for Hotel Chocolat, and if the early reviews are anything to go by, it may just become a summer staple.
Hotel Chocolat’s “Ice Cream of the Gods” will be available at the Southampton Westquay store from Saturday, with complimentary tastings running across the weekend.
