Try this homemade magic shell ice cream topping recipe, and be amazed at how simple and delicious (and customizable!) it is.

Using only two ingredients, you can make a marvelous crispy chocolate coating for your ice cream. Stick with basic chocolate, or spice it up with any flavor combinations you can dream of. It's so easy and addictive, you won't be able to resist making up several batches and sharing them with your friends. In fact, the basic recipe I used is vegan! (for all of your non-dairy frozen treats)

What makes this recipe a true winner in my book, is that it's almost fool-proof. You don't have to hover over your stove, hoping your chocolate won't turn, or that it won't temper right, or anything. Set it over low heat, and you can even walk away from it long enough to write up an Instructable!

Step 1: Ingredients

There are two basic ingredients for this recipe:

Coconut oil
Chocolate

Naomi from The Accidental Vegan recommends 1 cup of coconut oil to 1-2 cups of chocolate. Jocelyn at Brownie Points Blog recommends 100g coconut oil and 150g chocolate.

I discovered that for an 8oz jar (which makes a super cute gift, btw), the following ratio was perfect (but if you don't have a scale, the first set of measurements is fine!):

90g coconut oil
135g chocolate
dash sea salt

Once you try this recipe, you'll want to make it again, and you'll start to think about getting crazy with the flavors. Do it! Use tiny splashes of flavored extracts to get started, and build your flavor profiles from there.

Step 2: Magic It!

Melt the coconut oil over very low heat. Slowly stir in the chocolate until completely melted and blended. Add a dash of salt and any other flavors you desire.

Step 3: Jar It

Store your topping in a jar or squeeze bottle. In warmer weather, the topping will remain liquid (but firm up when it coats your ice cream), and in cooler weather, it will solidify. You don't need to refrigerate it, but if it does solidify, just nuke it for a few secs to make it all melty again.

Step 4: Marvel at It

Once it's completely cooled, it's time to try it out. I had my doubts, so I started with just a tiny dab on the top of my ice cream container. It hardened up immediately!

Now that you're a pro at making your own magic shell ice cream topping, it's time to experiment with other flavors. I got so carried away with this, I had bowls of measured ingredients lined up to make batch after batch. These are the combinations I tried:

Dark chocolate (vegan!)
Dark chocolate + orange extract
Semi sweet chocolate + mint extract
White chocolate + vanilla
White chocolate + vanilla + orange extract
Milk chocolate + vanilla + almond extract

What will you come up with?