The instruction booklet that came with my ice cream maker contains a recipe for chocolate cherry frozen yogurt. It calls for semi-sweet chocolate and maraschino cherries. I thought that sounded pretty good, but... I feel like if you're gonna put chocolate and cherries together, it really wants to be dark chocolate. And, as much as I love maraschino cherries — and I really love maraschino cherries — I also felt like regular dark, sweet cherries would bring more of that cherry-y goodness to the table. The nice thing that maraschino cherries add to the mix (aside from a lot of sugar and red food colouring) is almond. Cherry + almond is a great combo. So is almond + chocolate. And, as noted, chocolate + cherry. You see where this is going...

So, after a bit of tweaking, I ended up with a pretty excellent batch of rich, luscious dark chocolate-cherry-almond yogurt all ready to go into the ice cream maker for churning. It came out wonderfully! But, I have to admit, it was really hard not to just sit down and eat the unfrozen chocolate yogurt with a spoon! It was divine!

Dark Chocolate-Cherry-Almond Frozen Yogurt

Adapted from Cuisinart Instruction and Recipe Booklet

Ingredients

• 1/2 c. heavy (35%) cream¹
• 1/4 c. 1% milk
• 130g dark chocolate, chopped
• 2 c. fat-free plain Greek yogurt
• 2 Tbsp. maraschino cherry juice
• 1/4 tsp. almond extract
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1/2 c. pitted sweet cherries
• 1/2 c. slivered almonds

Directions

1. Combine cream and milk and gently heat to a simmer. Remove from heat.
2. Add chocolate pieces and stir until melted.
3. Add yogurt and stir until well-combined and homogeneous.
4. Mix in cherry juice, almond extract, and sugar.
5. Chill in fridge for at least two hours.
6. Pour into ice cream maker and churn for 20 minutes.
7. Add cherries and almonds and churn for an additional 5 minutes.
8. Transfer to an appropriate container and store in the freezer.

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¹ The original recipe called for 3/4 c. whole milk, but I had some heavy cream that was going begging in the fridge so I used what I had left and just added enough 1% milk to make the 3/4 c. called for. Use whatever milk or cream you have on hand for this with the caveat that low-fat milk will result in a firmer freezing, slightly more icy and less creamy end product. ^Back