mgaretz

Dinner last night was sirloin, cooked SV then seared, served with steamed Brussels sprouts.

After a full 24+ hours in the freezer (after the initial spin), the chocolate is much better texture-wise. The powdered coconut oil arrived today and I am hopeful that will give it the something extra it needs. Tasted it and no hint of coconut, which is a good thing.

The new chocolate came out pretty good. Very smooth and decent texture, but not quite as creamy as I like. Likely needs a bit more fat. One spin on the ice cream cycle, nothing frozen on the sides. First pic is right after spinning, second is after it's been in the freezer for 4 hours. Still a bit soft to scoop pretty, I assume it will be better tomorrow. Recipe was 14 ozs of lactose-free half and half, 120 grams of sugar, 1/4 cup cacao powder, 1 tsp espresso powder, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1 tbs vegetable glycerin, 2.7 grams of Perfect Sorbet stabilizer from Modernist Pantry.

I was looking at the ingredient list for my soft serve mix that is my go to base (with almond milk). Besides sugars the other significant ingredient is coconut oil. Since the mix is dry, it’s obviously powdered oil. So I decided to search for that and found some on Amazon, so I will try adding some of that (at some point) and see where that gets us.

You also weren't suggesting noise cancelling Apple earbuds as a solution, so you're good... And you're not buying, yet.... 😉

@Kerry Beal Did you tell us you bought one? Did I miss it? This afternoon I mixed up another batch of chocolate ice cream, but not from a recipe in the book. I used lactose-free half and half, sugar, vanilla extract, espresso powder and cacao powder. I also used my normal glycerin hack and also added some Perfect Sorbet stabilizer from Modernist Pantry (because it doesn't have to be heated to hydrate). (If it turns out good I will post the amounts of each.) If this works I will try subbing an allulose blend for the sugar. And if that works I will try almond milk instead of the half and half. I will report back tomorrow after spinning. Another thing I want to try is cherry pie sorbet but with a "no added sugar" can.

You guys are way over-thinking this. It's not THAT loud. About the same as my Blendtec or coffee grinder. Just walk into the next room.

Stir fry made with rescue char siu*, bok choy, mushrooms, onion and noodles. * The char siu was made from the meat I "rescued" from some awful Costco St. Louis ribs they sell alongside the rotisserie chicken. I carved the meat from the bones, rinsed off the rub and marinated in a char siu mix dry rub, then finished in the BSOA air fryer mode. Made the meat quite edible.

Yes I remember (and I have that tome), thanks. I have seen similar recipes that use homemade cashew "cream" instead of pistachios and oil and I may try that in the future.

Haven't tried anything new yet, but I am happy to report that the peanut butter salted caramel ice cream and cherry pie sorbet are still scoopable after being frozen for many days, with no sign of iciness returning.

Burger, made on the PAG, served with sweet potato tots in the BSOA and steamed Brussels sprouts with butter.

Panko shrimp (Costco) made in the NFG air fryer mode, sweet potato noodles, oven baked, steamed broccolini with butter.

The cycle is about 2.5 minutes. The re-spin is shorter and I imagine there are some differences between cycle types, but it hasn't been obvious.

Yes, quite loud, but then so is my Blendtec. I think I mentioned the noise above.

You seem to be able to. The manual actually says that if you eat some of the ice cream and freeze the leftovers, you can just rerun the original cycle if it froze too hard. I did exactly that tonight. Came out fine.

Actually it will. The manual actually says that if you eat some of the ice cream and freeze the leftovers, you can just rerun the original cycle if it froze too hard. I did exactly that tonight. Came out fine.

Yes, but I want that AND the ability to have it last for longer than just the one serving day.

Today I spun the cheery pie filling sorbet. Came out very nice on one spin of the sorbet setting. It's back in the freezer so we'll see what the scoopability is after refreezing. I left this one in the container too.

The theory is that it is the added stabilizers in the cream cheese that does the trick. They recommend Philadelphia brand which only has one stabilizer (guar gum if I’m recalling correctly). The tofutti is loaded with them. Also, their recipe states that you can substitute a dairy-free cream cheese.

Do you have them? Are the recipes any good?

Updates: The peanut butter salted caramel passed the scoopability test with flying colors. Easy to scoop right out of the freezer with a normal teaspoon. Still tasted the same, so this recipe works well in the Creami. As I suspected, the almond milk chocolate was a rock hard block of ice. I didn't even try to scoop or thaw it for eating. It is now history. So that recipe is a hard (forgive the pun) fail. The half and half chocolate recipe came out better. It took two spins on the ice cream cycle, and probably could have used a re-spin or another ice cream cycle. It tasted much better than the almond milk chocolate. It has a pretty low sugar content and more fat than they called for, but most normal ice cream recipes have more cream than milk, while their recipes have this reversed. It showed. The cream cheese substitute didn't make up for it, nor did it seem to have the stabilizing effect that people surmise is the reason for it in Jeni's and these recipes. I decided to keep this one in the Creami container so I can re-spin it if it's too hard tomorrow night. Bottom line is that this was reminiscent of cheap ice cream, not premium and not in the same ballpark as the PBSC. Since I can't source lactose free heavy cream here in the US, I will have to move on to substitutes. (Does anyone have any experience with adding lactase drops to cream?) I also decided to try one of their "one ingredient" desserts, one of which simply uses canned fruit pie filling to make a sorbet. I decided on cherry (since cherry pie is one of my favorite desserts). This is not a new idea as I have done a similar thing in the Blendtec. I did decide to add some almond extract (which enhances the cherry flavor and the alcohol reduces the freezing point) and also my go-to vegetable glycerin. I will spin and report tomorrow night.

Here are the not-so-great results of the "fry-off". For the test, I used a single potato (russet) sliced and water soaked for 30 minutes, dried then coated with a small amount peanut oil and some salt. The potatoes were then weighed and evenly split into two batches. My last success with the NFG was 18 minutes at 390F, so that is what I used for both, with a stir half-way in. My experience with the BSOA is that it either takes longer or needs a higher temp than a smaller air fryer, but for this test I decided to do apples-to-apples with the only variable being the machine. That proved to be a bad choice for several reasons as will become evident. First up are the fries from the NFG. They were clearly over-done and very crispy and the insides all but vanished. The time was obviously too long. Why did it work last time? The amount of potatoes was half of the successful attempt so I am sure that was the factor. Next up are the fries from the BSOA, which had the opposite problem - they were underdone. Cooked all the way through but limp. The taste was good and the insides were fluffy, but they either needed a higher temperature or more time. So neither was a success. The NFG pre-heats about a minute faster than the BSOA. I am sure both would have made good fries if the timing or temp had been adjusted, so more testing is in order. Is there a winner? Not yet, but the NFG clearly has the time advantage, while the BSOA has ton more capacity. I did eat all of them! Stay tuned...

Sirloin steak, cooked SV then seared, served with fries two-ways but both air fried. See the sir fryer thread for details.

The container is just clear plastic, nothing special, but I did remove the contents into other containers. A note in the manual says that if the ice cream is too hard after being in the freezer you can just re-process in on the original setting and that would be impractical unless you kept it in the original container. I am sure the failure was the substrate and not the unit.

Not at all.