117 replies to this topic

[Stone]

I couldn't find a thread on making ice cream.

I want to make pumpkin ice cream in my Delonghi 1.5 quart. Any goods ideas?

There was some ice cream talk on an earlier thread about ice cream machines. (couldn't find it. seach engine problems?) Had to do with making custard first? something like that.

Can someone put them here?

[Margaret Pilgrim]

DS, you could do a lot worse than simply freeze pumpkin pie filling, which is, when you think of it, spiced pumpkin custard. You can tweak the results by increasing either/and/or egg yolks and heavy cream.

[wingding]

Make an ice cream base with some pumpkin-pieish spices that you like-ginger,cinammon,cloves..Roast some pumpkin or sqaush till it begins to caramelize.Puree it,and strain through a chinoise[this won't be easy]...Add pumpkin puree to base to taste,maybe some maple syrup or honey to combat iciness and add flavor.Strain the completed base again.and let the base sit for at least six hours,then taste again to adjust flavors before turning in your machine..

[Stone]

O.k. I did a search and found 7 threads. Lots of good info, but none actually had a recipe for ice cream.

Can someone give me one? Preferably one I can turn into pumpkin ice cream and make in a 1.5 quart delonghi.

Thank you thank you thank you.

[TatarsHat]

Here's one I have made that is quite good.

Courtesy of the Ice Cream Parlour. http://www.dsuper.ne...ream/frame/html


PUMPKIN ICE CREAM



1 1/2 cups light cream
6 egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 cups canned solid pack pumpkin

Scald cream in heavy saucepan. Whisk yolks, sugar and vanilla in medium bowl. Gradually whisk in the cream, add the spice. Return to saucepan and stir over medium-low heat until mixture thickens, about 10 minutes; do not boil. Remove from heat. Whisk in the heavy cream and the pumpkin. Strain into bowl. Refrigerate until well chilled.

Transfer to ice cream maker and process according to manufacturer's instructions.

[Anna N]

So, I got an ice cream maker for Christmas - Cuisinart ICE-20C. Here's the recipe I used (modified by me so it shouldn't be a copyright issue):

1 cup 35% cream
1 cup whole milk
2 egg yolks (from xtra large eggs)
1/4 cup sugar
vanilla extract - total of 1T plus 1t.

Make custard in usual fashion, let cool completely, pour into already frozen container of ice cream maker and process for 20 minutes.

The problem? The ice cream tastes fine, the texture is quite nice. But there's at least 25% of the custard firmly stuck in a layer around the bowl of the ice cream maker. It is almost impossible to scrape out (no metal implements allowed) and what I do scrape out has a much less pleasing texture. Is it taken for granted that you will have this much "waste"? Not that it will be wasted, I did manage eventually to get most of it out and put it in a separate container in the freezer and I know The Dane will eat it - it's ice cream after all. But it seems to me that the bowl needs some scraping down during the processing. Any one have any ideas?

The same thing happened yesterday making frozen berry yogourt but since I had misread the recipe and done some things that in hindsight were not too bright, I took the blame. Today I followed the recipe like a scientist and still this layer formed.

Many thanks.

[Jason Perlow]

Theres no pectin in your mix. You need some in the custard during the setting process. The next time you make it, put in some jam or other kind of preserves (a little bit of peach jam or orange marmelade) and then refrigerate the batter to let it set for several hours after cooking it in the pot.

pectin is essential for preventing crystalization in ice cream.

Also, do not process the ice cream to the point of freezing it entirely. After you process it into a semi-hardened state, at the theshhold point of which is is soft serve, you want to take it out of the machine, put it in a container and then in the freezer for it to finish congealing.

[wingding]

Gelatin is not always used to stabilize ice cream.Sugar is vital in preventing crystilization,as are yolks.Of all the ingredients you've included,the high proportion of cream will cause the most problems,as will turning the ice cream in the freezer too long.Here is a basic gelato proportion,which yields nice creamy results,if you want to try it[flavor as you wish]....1 liter milk,10 yolks,350 grams sugar;cook as you would a regular anglaise...

[Rachel Perlow]

I think Jason got his terms wrong. I believe the desired part of using a bit of jam is the pectin.

[Jason Perlow]

Yep. I meant pectin.

[Anna N]

Winding, and both Perlows,

Thanks for your suggestions. Having asked for advice I'm not about to argue with it so please take this in the spirit of inquiry:

The recipe I used came from the instruction book that accompanied the product. The only changes I made were to halve the quantities given but add one extra egg yolk and to use pure vanilla extra rather than a vanilla bean (don't have vanilla beans and they are hard to come by around here).

But before I even attempted it, I looked up quite a number of recipes for vanilla icecream both on the Web and in cookbooks I own. None of them called for pectin but most called for a whole lot more egg yolks - 17 (seventeen) in one of them (for about double the quantity of liquid I used).

Initially I want to make plain vanilla ice cream - our favourite all-purpose dessert-making basic. So I'd rather not have to resort to marmalade or such even though I make the best Scotch and Seville orange marmalade around! Can I use powdered pectin instead and what sort of quantity would be appropriate for two cups of liquid?

If I remove some of the heavy cream and replace it with milk (homo 3%) do I need to increase the number of egg yolks?

I know darn well this is going to take practice and experimentation, I just like to start an experiment with the highest likelihood of success!

Many, many thanks for your time and input.

[Jason Perlow]

Adding a spoonfull or two of marmalade doesnt affect the flavor profile of a strong vanilla bean ice cream. We've done this several times with very good results.

[Anna N]

Adding a spoonfull or two of marmalade doesnt affect the flavor profile of a strong vanilla bean ice cream. We've done this several times with very good results.

I'm convinced! I will give it a try next ice-cream making session.

Do you think ice cream still has calories when you're trying to perfect a recipe?

[Sandra Levine]

Do you think ice cream still has calories when you're trying to perfect a recipe?

Not if you do the tasting while standing up.

[Rachel Perlow]

Initially I want to make plain vanilla ice cream - our favourite all-purpose dessert-making basic.  So I'd rather not have to resort to marmalade or such even though I make the best Scotch and Seville orange marmalade around!  Can I use powdered pectin instead and what sort of quantity would be appropriate for two cups of liquid?

Here's a link to Alton Brown's "Serious" Vanilla Ice Cream from Good Eats on the Food Network. This is where we got the idea to add preserves to ice cream. Click the link for instructions, meanwhile, here's the ingredient list:2 cups half-and-half
1 cup whipping cream
1 cup minus 2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons peach preserves (not jelly)
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
The most important thing to keep in mind when using an ice cream maker is to thoroughly chill your ice cream batter before freezing. If you put it in while it is warm or at room temperature, you may get bits of congealed butter churned out of your cream.

About having some stuck to the bottom of the mixing container, not letting it freeze until hard will definitely help. You can scrape out the softly frozen ice cream with a rubber spatula.

[Anna N]

Initially I want to make plain vanilla ice cream - our favourite all-purpose dessert-making basic.  So I'd rather not have to resort to marmalade or such even though I make the best Scotch and Seville orange marmalade around!  Can I use powdered pectin instead and what sort of quantity would be appropriate for two cups of liquid?

Here's a link to Alton Brown's "Serious" Vanilla Ice Cream from Good Eats on the Food Network. This is where we got the idea to add preserves to ice cream. Click the link for instructions, meanwhile, here's the ingredient list:2 cups half-and-half
1 cup whipping cream
1 cup minus 2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons peach preserves (not jelly)
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped

The most important thing to keep in mind when using an ice cream maker is to thoroughly chill your ice cream batter before freezing. If you put it in while it is warm or at room temperature, you may get bits of congealed butter churned out of your cream.

About having some stuck to the bottom of the mixing container, not letting it freeze until hard will definitely help. You can scrape out the softly frozen ice cream with a rubber spatula.

Oddly, this is one of the recipes I found but didn't trust as it did not call for eggs at all. Being totally new to ice cream making I thought it was a bit strange and wondered if there'd been an ingredient omitted. I guess not. No eggs! Hmmmmmmmmm.

So, my next effort will definitely be the Alton Brown with the pectin source and I will chill my ingredients over night before putting them in the machine. I will report back - we just need to eat up the vanilla ice cream and berry frozen yogourt first - else there'll be no room in the freezer for anything! But I promise to report back when I do make it.

Again, thanks to everyone for their help - this board is GREAT!

[Jason Perlow]

Adding eggs makes it a frozen custard, not a true ice cream. But you can add egg yolks when cooking the batter, that will make it a little richer and closer to the "french vanilla" ice cream spec. You'll have to temper it though, otherwise you will end up with scrambled eggs in hot cream. Yick.

If you are serious about making your own vanilla ice cream mail order the beans. Extract is good but if French Vanilla is what you want, you wont be able to duplicate the taste without the beans.

[pjs]

Jason is correct. Having worked in an ice cream parlor as a teenager where EVERYTHING was made on premises--including the chocolate Easter bunnies--frozen custard has eggs, ice cream does not.

PJ

[wingding]

Ice cream,custard,and gelato are legally defined by fat content and overrun[how much air is incorpated into the product as it is frozen.]There can be varying proportions of milk,cream or eggs in any of these products,but the ultimate fat content defines them. A few other tips;If you use pectin,only use a very small amount[about .5-5% of total volume of your product]-maybe a teaspoon per quart of liquid.Mix the pectin thoroughly with your sugar so that it doesn't lump up.Always let your base rest,chill and ripen at least 6 hours[overnight is best]before turning in your machine,and always turn a cold base;if your base is warm,it will take longer to turn,and therefore incorporate too much air.

Edited by wingding, 27 December 2002 - 04:04 AM.

[oraklet]

"The most important thing to keep in mind when using an ice cream maker is to thoroughly chill your ice cream batter before freezing. If you put it in while it is warm or at room temperature, you may get bits of congealed butter churned out of your cream."

why?


and how to duplicate the haegen datz experience?

[Steve Klc]

Anna--what you're noticing may just be a function of your machine--super-cooling (i.e. freezing) your liquid mixture against the core too quickly--and never actually getting churned evenly. It might just be poorly designed and engineered but then I don't know how expensive the machine is. If it is a self-contained cooling unit--i.e. expensive--just don't pre-chill your bowl as much before adding your mix next time; if it is a removable core try adding slightly more mix and add it all at once. That's the job of the dasher--to scrape down the walls. It also could be alot of other things, including a mix not properly integrated and homogenized. When your mix is chilled overnight to cure--always stir it up before pouring in and freezing. I know, seems obvious.

Be careful adding pectin or other stabilizers--depending on your ingredients--even a teaspoon can make the end product taste "gummy." And being concerned with this stuff can tend to put the cart before the horse, needlessly complicating something that should be simple and accessible as a beginner experimenting.

You chill your mix before freezing for several reasons--the main one being so your machine doesn't over-work your mix as wingding said--that over-churning or spinning too long is what can give you that slight (or severe) graininess. It also can happen if your recipe is "overfat" to begin with. If you have the cheapo $50 removeable core machines and try to chill a warm mix you'll have to wait for another day, for the core to re-freeze after you've turned your mix to slush and no farther.

Oh, and "ice cream" can and often does contain egg.

To get the Haagen Daz experience you have to acquire some of the knowledge of food and dairy scientists, and be especially knowledgeable of things like guar gum, carrageenan, carob, pectin and all sorts of other perfectly natural, perfectly safe additives and stabilizers. It's beyond most professional pastry chefs and certainly beyond most home cooks. And this element--the pectin-type addition--comes mainly into play when you consider storage--how an ice cream is held in the freezer from a few hours old to several days--that's where the "stabilizer" works its magic interfering chemically with water and fat bonds to prevent crystallization. At home you don't need to worry about this aspect--churn fresh and eat.

This is also why the old-style pastry chefs--who haven't quite gotten with the science aspect of this--melt and re-freeze their ice creams from the day before--and re-spin before the next day's service.

The answer to most of the how and why questions lie with first coming to understand, as Wingding said, the properties of the yolk and sugar in a "recipe"--what happens when you cook a creme anglaise--and then use that for an ice cream. Then you can start manipulating fat content. The last element--and an insignificant one for home cooks--will be using these stabilizers.

And for me, the only "true" ice creams begin with a creme anglaise base--though many seem to be scared off this style, it gives mouthfeel, richness, depth and creaminess. I know there are fans of ice cream and frozen dairy without egg--I'm just not one of them. It's a different product.

But then it helps to keep in mind that the world of frozen desserts has many categories, styles, effects, etc. It's a big sliding scale with a lot of room for different textures and taste sensations.

[oraklet]

all right then, to get close to the haegen datz, should i make a "thin" creme anglaise? (so that it melts on the tongue in a more-or-less similar way)

by the way, i don't think they use any additives?

[Jason Perlow]

Hell yes they use additives. It may be a superpremium but they still have to use those things, even though it isnt listed on their ingredient list.

[wingding]

Any frozen ice cream product that goes out the door of an establishment for wholesale or retail sales is subject to stringent regulations,and has to be stabilized to prevent melting and spoiling while being transported.There's really no point to duplicating this at home,cause home made or restaurant ice cream can be way better than packaged stuff.Haagen-Daz has a high fat content-so if that's what you like,do a base with a higher proportion of eggs or cream.It's a skill that takes time to develop,and involves a fair amount of science-don't expect to become a master on your first batch of ice cream...

[oraklet]

"though it isnt listed on their ingredient list. "

in denmark it would be illegal (and it doesn't tell of any). not in usa?

and anyway, aren't the additives you mention used to make the cheap ice creams fluffy and horrible in many ways

[Steve Klc]

No oraklet, you misunderstand additives. Additives are used in commercial ice creams and sorbets--are perfectly natural, not harmful--and if used skillfully are undetectable. (Of course commercial ice creams can be gummed up or tricked up as dietary or cost cutting measures as well.)

I can't speak of Denmark, but in the US just read an ice cream or sorbet label. That's how it can be frozen for so long, packaged and shipped and stocked into freezer display cases--taken home and left in your freezer at home--and yet still remain perfectly soft and scoopable. Buy a pint of Haagen Daz Vanilla Swiss Almond or Mango sorbet or whatever and post the ingredients exactly as they appear, in order, and we'll compare.

When I first started playing with ice creams I used "Frozen Desserts" by Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir. I still recommend it for beginners. There's also a nice chapter on sorbet in Harold McGee's "The Curious Cook" when you decide to start playing around with sorbet--a different animal from ice cream. These are good for home cooks.

You have to turn to more advanced sources--and more advanced pastry chefs--to start to get a handle on the role different sugars and stabilizers can play in ice creams and sorbets--how to achieve more precision by using tools like a refractometer--and how you have to modify your recipes for the type of ice cream freezer you have, say for a PacoJet. This more advanced approach is still being written and isn't widely shared or available to pros yet either. In the industry and among food writers and cookbook authors there is resistance to this--it's seen as too complicated to understand and/or un-neccesary--what could be better than simple pure ingredients combined and churned simply?

That's the approach you'd be wise to start with at home, simple recipes repeated and tasted. Even with an inexpensive machine these batches should still come out good, and yet you can't even do that without acquiring some minimal basic science first--like understanding why and how you have to cook a creme anglaise to 175-180 F.

Well, as all of you who have tried to make ice creams at home--you know it ain't so simple. In fact, the more you dig into it the more you'll discover making ice creams and sorbets is far from simple, quite scientific but after an investment of time, quite rewarding.

[Jason Perlow]

Ben and Jerrys uses hydrogenated vegetable oils and other stuff for softening ingredients, and they too are classified as a superpremium ice cream. At least they admit it though.

go to this page and do a search on "Product" (no search text)

http://www.benandjerrys.com/ca/

What prevents your fruit from freezing or tasting icy?

 Answer
 At 05/09/2002 01:01 PM we wrote - Good question. The answer is sugar. Sugar retards the freezing process. You can test this by taking two plastic cups and filling one with water and the other with 1/4 cup of sugar and water. Put both in the freezer and see which one freezes first. In addition to sugar, our ice cream contains small amounts of the stabilizers carrageenan and guar gum. Both of these natural plant products stabilize the ice cream's melting properties, helping to keep water molecules from migrating through the product and causing iciness.

[oraklet]

wingding, jason and steve,

ok, i see what you mean. my point, really, is just that i'd like to be able to make the haagen daz sort of ice cream. you know, one of my few culinary triumphs was making vanilla ice cream with mixed fruit sorbet for 25 guests half of whom asked for the recipe... but this ice cream (which is pretty nice every time i make it) was "stabilized" by whipping the cream (instead of making a creme anglaise), and i feel that it still doesn't have the optimal "melting".

so please, what to do?

and perhaps my machine (a small philips) demands a different approach from my usual just-put-it-in-the-freezer-and-stir-every-quarter-of-an-hour method?

[Steve Klc]

Oraklet--tell us more about your machine, because that put it in the freezer and stir every quarter hour method, well, frankly isn't ever going to produce ice cream. Granite, maybe, can be made quite well without an ice cream machine--by putting a water/sugar/fruit mixture in the freezer, allowing it to partially freeze and then stirring it up--and then repeating. But for ice cream, you need an ice cream machine. And a good one.

Describe your process with the Phillips and the whipped cream as well. Sounds interesting and more like a frozen parfait--again, a different animal from ice cream. In fact, many people might experience more success with parfaits--with frozen dessert alternatives to ice cream--at home--than they would with ice cream. An interesting angle Oraklet.

And yet there will be some who will still wonder why "recipes" don't seem to work--even given the lack of understanding or agreement of terms and techniques and equipment issues--the lack of a critical mass if you will. We're seeing on this thread that there is confusion surrounding even the simplest of terms--and this shared language has to come before you can get into comparing recipes or looking for the magical perfect Haagen Daz recipe. In fact, one might question the wisdom of trying to emulate Haagen Dazs at all.

[oraklet]

"put it in the freezer and stir every quarter hour method, well, frankly isn't ever going to produce ice cream. But for ice cream, you need an ice cream machine. And a good one. Describe your process with the Phillips and the whipped cream as well. Sounds interesting and more like a frozen parfait--again, a different animal from ice cream."

before i got my machine, actually i didn't whip the cream till quite stiff, just to a creme anglaise structure(?). added it to the egg-sugar-vanilla mix, and froze it, stirring every quarter of an hour. as said, this makes for a very nice dessert (not ice cream?) which melts in a relatively satisfactory way. but it isn't perfect. with my machine, i've used a creme anglaise base. this hasn't produced a perfect melt, either: doesn't go directly from ice to liquid as i want it to (which is the reason that i ask if it were a good idea to make a "thin" anglaise). i've had the butter pockets too, but now i know why, thanx a lot.