My Epicurean Adventures

A food blog about cooking quick & easy, healthy(ish) meals that my family loves + fun lunchbox ideas for kids with nut allergies and more!

Homemade Magic Shell

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I LOVED Magic Shell as a kid, not because it tasted great, but because the way it immediately hardened on ice cream was the coolest thing ever. It was MAGICAL! But, I still remember it tasting kinda weird and chemically. Too bad it didn’t taste more like Dairy Queen’s chocolate dip! As much as I loved that stuff, though, I had no intention of introducing it to my own kids as they already get enough of that kind of junk.

Well, you can imagine my utter excitement (and a little disbelief) when I ran across a recipe for Homemade Magic Shell on Real Food, Real Love’s Facebook Page. It was sooooo easy to make, too! C’mon, only two ingredients are REALLY all you need to make it?!? Believe it or not, it’s true! And it tastes OH SO GOOD. ALMOST as good as Dairy Queen’s version! So be sure to try it out. You really don’t have much to lose but less than 10 minutes of your time and 2 ingredients. (Updated: 7/21/19): The link to the recipe no longer works so I just included the recipe below.

I made this just last night for the hubby and myself. I put some ice cream in a big bowl, mixed some peanut butter cups into it, shoveled it into a waffle cone and drizzled some Homemade Magic Shell on it. So decadent and delicious! And WAY cheaper than buying one in those fancy ice cream shops. Mine is in a ramekin for portion control. Made with dark chocolate, I like to say that it’s actually GOOD for you! Wink, wink.

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Homemade Magic Shell

Course Dessert
Keyword treats
Prep Time 10 minutes
Servings 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup chocolate chips
  • 1/4 cup coconut oil

Instructions

  1. Combine ingredients in a small sauce pan.

  2. Heat over low heat and stir until completely melted.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool for 5 minutes.

  4. Drizzle over your favorite ice cream and watch it harden immediately!

  5. Enjoy!

Recipe Notes

Note:

Basically, it's a 2:1 ratio of chocolate:coconut oil ratio. Make more or less as you please.

Also, you NEED TO USE COCONUT OIL for this recipe! Coconut oil has a melting/freezing point of about 76 degrees F. That means it starts to solidify at temperatures below 76 degrees. That's why your coconut oil is liquid in the summer and is solid in the winter. So when it comes into contact with ice cream, which is in the 30's degrees F range, it hardens!

Other common cooking oils such as: corn, vegetable, canola, grapeseed, safflower, olive oil just to name a few, all have very low melting/freezing points between 1-20 degrees F and won't solidify when it comes into contact with ice cream. Interesting, huh?

Now if you are one of those who can't stand the taste of coconut, there are other oils such as palm kernel oil, cocoa butter or palm oil with very high melting/freezing temperatures so in THEORY, those should work, too. BUT I haven't tried these myself so feel free to experiment!

Use this handy dandy table to see more fat and oil melting points:

http://www.veganbaking.net/articles/tools/fat-and-oil-melt-point-temperatures

As noted in the recipe, it’s basically, it’s a 2:1 ratio of chocolate-to-coconut-oil ratio. Make more or less as you like!

Please note: you NEED TO USE COCONUT OIL for this recipe! Coconut oil has a melting/freezing point of about 76 degrees F. That means it starts to solidify at temperatures below 76 degrees. Have you ever noticed that your coconut oil is liquid in the summer and is solid in the winter? That’s why! So when it comes into contact with ice cream, which I assume is in the mid 30 degree F range, it hardens!

Other common cooking oils such as: corn, vegetable, canola, grapeseed, safflower and olive oil, just to name a few, all have very low melting/freezing points between 1-20 degrees F and won’t solidify when it comes into contact with ice cream. Interesting, huh? Now if you are one of those folks who can’t stand the taste of coconut, there are other oils such as palm kernel oil, cocoa butter or palm oil with very high melting/freezing temperatures like coconut oil. So, in THEORY, those should work, too. I haven’t tried these myself so feel free to experiment! Use this handy dandy table to see more Fat and Oil Melting Point Temperatures.

Next up is Sweetie’s homemade ice cream in a waffle cone, topped off with some homemade magic shell. YUM! He followed his favorite ice cream recipe: Homemade Ben and Jerry’s Sweet Cream Ice Cream.

The girls’ ice cream is topped with sprinkles, of course! Also served in ramekins because do they really need more sugar than that before bed?!

Here’s a quick and easy sopapilla sundae that I served at my Mexican Fiesta Volleyball Party last year. It’s simply made with a scoop (or two) of vanilla ice cream, a good long drizzle of Homemade Magic Shell, a dollop of whipped cream and a handful of Stacy’s Cinnamon Sugar Pita Chips. So easy and OH soooo goood! Needless to say, it was a big hit!!!

What’s also cool is that you can just stick what you don’t use in an air-tight glass jar and store it at room temp for about a month. When I want to use some, I just scoop some out into a small microwaveable dish and nuke it for like 8 seconds and it’s ready to use.

Thanks so much for stopping by! Feel free to make my day by leaving me a comment, following my blog via email, on Facebook or on Instagram – the more the merrier!

Christine, aka happyvballgirl 🙂

To check out items used in this post or some of my favorites, simply click here: “Products I Love“. Purchases made using these links earns me a little extra cash to support my bento habit, which Hubby really appreciates. Haha! So, THANK YOU, should you choose to purchase any of ’em!

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Comments

  1. Zillow

    SO MANY people “THINK” they know the ingredients to magic shell topping beit Dairy Queen, Magic Shell, Smuckers, etc. is chocolate chips. Did you ever wonder why you hold a chocoalte chip in your hand and it is solid? Because it contains WAX. WAX! If you melt chocolate chips in the microwave or by the stove top, why would you need coconut oil???? Or any oil? Try it with out the coconut oil. But that wax on iceream is hard as a rock and has to be heated to use. Who wants to heat up magic shell icecream toppings?

    No. The secret ingredient in ALL of these self-hardening ice cream toppings is….PALM Oil. From a quote, ” Bottom Line: Palm oil is 100% fat, half of which is saturated. It also contains vitamin E and red palm oil contains antioxidants called carotenoids, which your body can convert into vitamin A.” -end quote. Bam! There you go! 100% fat. Tastes awesome and it will solidifiy on icecream. Not wax but PALM OIL. And I do not know about you but in my southern USA state we are controlled by all of the big corporations and they pay all the local chains to keep their products on the shelf with no room for choices. Palm oil is used so much in all European countries but , by golly, you won’t get it here. MAYBE in California or NY or Illinois but I still have my doubts. I have shopped at all of the most exclusive, expensive, and health food stores included and NO palm oil. Nutella has it but it is no longer sold in my area.

    Oh my. All of the palm plantations. Killing the forests. As this may be true, however, you had better believe that large corporations that use palm oil in nearly every product especially chocolates and candies cake mixes and tons more; you won’t find them replacing palm oil with something else to save an orangutane or a monkey. You will do without buying it and cooking with it but not the large companies. And why do you think the awesome cocoa butter is so expensive? Major manufactures use the ever living *ell out of the stuff drving up costs. As well as palm oils and both of these are the most delicious ingredients you can add to sweets. Palm oil is high in fat but is extremely high in Vitamin E.

    Seriously, a great post for homemade magic shell but I just had to set the record straight. I hope many more will read this and get their hands on palm oil and find the right ratio of palm oil, sunflower oil, cocoa and the few other ingredients in it. Also, soy lecethin is used sometimes to halp “thcken” the stuff and helps preserve it without spoiling.

    Reply

    • happyvballgirl

      Thanks, Yaddy. They changed their site around a little bit. I've updated the link. Thanks for letting me know! 🙂

      Reply

  6. Brenda

    Thanks for sharing! Checked out the link to the recipe…Wow, that looks sooo simple and your photos show that it's a great recipe 😉

    Have a sweet weekend :*)
    ~Brenda @ChattingOverChocolate.blogspot.com

    Reply

  7. Stephanie Michaels

    Oh Magic Shell is the best! We had that all the time as a kid, I can't wait to make some. ; )
    Thanks for sharing on Super Sweet Saturday!
    Steph
    swtboutique.com

    Reply

  10. Bonny @ thedomesticatedprincess.com

    I'm pinning this because my family loves the dipped cones at DQ but only get them on road trips to the grandparents' house.

    Reply

    • happyvballgirl

      AWESOME! I love DQ dipped cones as well… YUM. 🙂 How cool you can have them in the comfort of your own home, and w/ no yucky chemicals to boot! 🙂

      Reply

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