Home Made Ice Cream (2013– )

[pastrygirl]

What do you consider to be a big batch? And what is the capacity of your ice cream machine? I always make a gallon of custard at a time, but my machine only fits half at a time. I don't find ice baths particularly tedious at that scale, just part of the process. I have done a 1-1/2 gallon batch a few times, but larger isn't practical for me mostly because of the equipment I have to work with - not enough big bowls. Plus, the larger volume of dairy I scald, the more likely it seems to scorch.

[paulraphael]

A single one or two gallon batch ins't too tedious, but someone makeing a few flavors a day in those quantities will be stirring a lot of bowls floating in ice baths. This may be what pastry interns are for.

[pastrygirl]

A single one or two gallon batch ins't too tedious, but someone makeing a few flavors a day in those quantities will be stirring a lot of bowls floating in ice baths. This may be what pastry interns are for.

Totally an intern job! I rarely make more than 3 batches in a day, I just throw a ladle in the bowl and give it a few good stirs in the first few minutes then a few more later. I rather enjoy ice cream day

[RWood]

I'm generally spinning a couple of batches of ice cream a day. I have to maintain between 6-8 flavors, and we go through a lot of it. I try to make at least 2 gallons of each flavor just to stay ahead. I've found any ice cream recipe can be scaled up without any issues.

[rlibkind]

I've made two batches of black raspberry ice cream this week. Hardest part but well worth it is seeding the raspberries.

I let 3 cups of the raspberries sit for two hours in half a cup of sugar bruising them a bit to let the juice run out. Then they get pressed through a fine mesh strainer or chinoise.

Next I reduce the juice for a little bit on the stove. A cup of sugar goes into a pint of heavy cream pasteurized but not ultrapasteurized, gently heated and stirred until the sugar dissolves, adding a couple tablespoons of plain corn syrup. Mix the raspberry juice and cream together along with a tablespoon of vodka or framboise eau de vie. and place in the fridge overnight before placing in your ice cream maker. A half cup or three quarters of cup of the smallest chocolate chips/chunks you can find can be added a few minutes before you stop the ice cream maker. Let ripen in the freezer for at least four hours. It's been yummy.

[lancastermike]

I've made two batches of black raspberry ice cream this week. Hardest part but well worth it is seeding the raspberries. I let 3 cups of the raspberries sit for two hours in half a cup of sugar bruising them a bit to let the juice run out. Then they get pressed through a fine mesh strainer or chinoise.Next I reduce the juice for a little bit on the stove. A cup of sugar goes into a pint of heavy cream pasteurized but not ultrapasteurized, gently heated and stirred until the sugar dissolves, adding a couple tablespoons of plain corn syrup. Mix the raspberry juice and cream together along with a tablespoon of vodka or framboise eau de vie. and place in the fridge overnight before placing in your ice cream maker. A half cup or three quarters of cup of the smallest chocolate chips/chunks you can find can be added a few minutes before you stop the ice cream maker. Let ripen in the freezer for at least four hours. It's been yummy.

This sounds fantastic. My friend Raymond makes black raspberry preserves and has been champion of the Perry County fair with them. To strain his raspberries he uses pantyhose. He tells me he only uses unworn for this purpose. I sincerely hope that to be true

[Toliver]

I made Alton Brown's Serious Vanilla Ice Cream for our 4th of July BBQ. I made 2 & 1/2 times the recipe to reach the fill line on the inside of the (electric) ice cream maker canister. I also cut back on the sugar, using 3/4 cup less than called for. The mixture was cooked the day before so it could sit in the refrigerator overnight for the flavors to meld. The actual ice cream was made just before the BBQ so it could ripen in the freezer for a bit.

After everyone came back for seconds, there wasn't a scoop left.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I use an ice cream maker, but for making ice cream without a machine you might try this recipe from icecreamscience (note, the recipe has not been tried by me):

http://icecreamscience.com/2012/08/31/how-to-make-vanilla-ice-cream-without-an-ice-cream-maker-recipe/

However if smooth ice cream is what you want I recommend you get a machine. Here is a current thread on ice cream machines:

http://forums.egullet.org/topic/37816-ice-cream-machines/

For a dairy free recipe I highly recommend Modernist Cuisine gelato. I have made batches of the peanut butter version. I find it hard to believe there is no heavy cream in there. You will need an ice cream maker, though. Note there are slightly different versions of this recipe. I followed the recipe from Modernist Cuisine at Home (leaving out the fruit juice and replacing it with water):

http://modernistcuisine.com/recipes/p-b-j-gelato/

Be sure to use a very smooth nut butter. One batch I made from a small company's "smooth" peanut butter was not as good as what I've made from peanut butter that was actually smooth.

Edited July 11, 2013 by JoNorvelleWalker (log)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

This summer I have not been making much ice cream but I have been churning out a few experiments using trehalose to replace part of the sucrose in my recipe.

Some links on trehalose:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2708026/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trehalose

My starting recipe (prepared by icecreamscience.com technique):

heavy cream 750 ml

whole milk 250 ml

medium egg yolks 6

sugar (sucrose) 100 g

kosher salt pinch

vanilla paste 1 tablespoon

This recipe gives me consistently good results, to my taste, with the only fault, if you could call it that, of being hard as a brick after a day or two in the freezer. I wanted to make the ice cream softer without making the ice cream appreciably sweeter. Trehalose is less than half as sweet as sucrose.

Keeping other ingedients the same I varied the amounts of sucrose and trehalose.

70 g sucrose/70 g trehalose gave about the same sweetness as 100 g sucrose alone, but the ice cream melted more rapidly than I would like and tasted syrupy, making me thirsty from eating it. Syrupiness is a fault I find in some commercial ice cream.

110 g sucrose/30 g trehalose was better in flavor but was too sweet in addition to being syrupy.

90 g sucrose/20 g trehalose seems just about perfect to me. The ice cream is scoopable (though still hard) and tastes great. Melts nicely. Texture is lovely. Just the right sweetness, although I realize many might prefer a sweeter ice cream.

None of the various batches I've made with this method have been the least bit icy even after weeks in the freezer.

Has anyone else tried trehalose in ice cream?

[Blade Runner]

Hello,

I've a question on the Migoya "Frozen Dessert" approaches.
More specifically on the order and temperature of the ingredients.

With the custard method, he basically puts all ingredients in a pan and heats it up until 77-85?C.
Yet using the approach with emulsifier/stabiliser, the dry milk, sugars and cream all go in at a particular different temperature.

Why might this be needed/better?
What about a custard base in which I want to use different sugars? Or in which I put gelatin as a stabilizer?

What's the chemistry behind this? (for a novice)

Thanks,

BR

[jjahorn]

As another chemistry novice I can tell you that gelatine and many of the stabilizers need heat to activate.

I don't believe it really makes a difference if you put your sugar in as you start or have heated it to 40C - I figure that description might have something to do with the equipment they use.

As to bringing it to 82-85C - this is to activate as much of the stabilizer as possible, or for egg based custards to pasteurize it.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Something different. I am quite happy with my previously mentioned trehalose recipe, to recap:

heavy cream 750 ml

whole milk 250 ml

medium/large egg yolks 6

sugar (sucrose) 90 g

trehalose 20 g

kosher salt pinch

vanilla paste 1 tablespoon

However I've been studying CIA's The Professional Chef (9th edition 2011) and a recipe for Cinnamon Ice Cream (p 1135) caught my eye. Since they are both CIA books I expected something similar to Migoya, but unless I am misremembering, rather different.

Curiosity got the better of me and I cooked up a batch. Here are the ingredients:

milk 8 oz

heavy cream 8 oz

glucose 1/2 oz

salt 1/4 teaspoon

cinnamon stick 1

ground cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon

sugar 3 1/2 oz

egg yolks 8

I followed the CIA recipe as closely as I could except not having glucose I substituted trehalose, which on a weight basis has about the same sweetness. Plugging the numbers into the Ice Cream Geek online calculator...

http://www.icecreamgeek.com/?page_id=817

...we see that my standard recipe is 23.8% butterfat, the CIA recipe is 13.5% butterfat, sugar 9.1% to 15.9%, and the CIA recipe is more than twice the percentage of egg yolk! Keep in mind that both batches are reduced, but Ruben's method (which I use for my recipe) reduces by about 30%, not as much by the CIA method (I did not measure).

The mix is in my refrigerator. Will it be a success?

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Verdict on the CIA -- not bad. Too sweet, of course, but that is probably just me, and I would like more butterfat. Texture is good. There is no objectionable iciness (at least not after only seven hours in the freezer). The large amount of salt in the recipe helps balance the large amount of sugar, it sort of works. Yield stress is OK. This ice cream does not serve quite as readily as my reference recipe above, but you'd have to scoop them side to side to see (guilty). And I'd like a more pronounced cinnamon flavor, if anyone should ask.

As nice as the texture and mouthfeel were, next to my reference prepared by Ruben's method there was no comparison. On the other hand the CIA recipe was quick and easy to throw together. The same cannot be said of Ruben's method. Yet if one had a commercial kitchen, as presumably the intended audience of The Professional Chef would have, the procedure of Ruben's method could easily be automated, for example by using a stirring temperature controlled hot plate or rotary evaporator.

Thinking about cinnamon ice cream, I really think bay leaf works as well or better, as suggested by lesliec.

Edit: the glossary of The Professional Chef makes clear that "glucose" in the recipe is the sugar, and not atomized glucose or glucose syrup.

Edited August 10, 2013 by JoNorvelleWalker (log)

[Ruben Porto]

Hi Jo! Good to see you still going strong on the ice cream front

Just wondering whether you have ever tried making Indian ice cream flavours before? I need to get my ice cream making on after a long absence! There are some Indian flavours that sound interesting.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Thanks, Ruben, good to see you back! Do you mean "Indian ice cream" as from India or Native American? Both traditions have interesting contributions but I have tried neither and probably shan't any time soon. However I'm wanting to try using spices that might be considered Indian (the subcontinent), particularly saffron. Before I start using anything as expensive as saffron, though, I want to improve my extraction methods.

MC (2-310) suggests infusing saffron into cold liquid for 24 hr at 3 deg C, rather than a warm extraction. I know from reading and from my own cooking that crocins (the pretty yellow color) are easily soluable in warm water. But the flavor components of saffron are not. I suspect that more saffron flavor will be extracted into alcohol or fat than into water.

I got reasonable results pressure extracting licorice in milk, as discussed earlier in this thread. I'm planning to try cream or a mixture of milk and cream since cream has higher fat. I plan to work with licorice first as I have a lot of licorice and licorice is not quite as expensive as saffron.

Lavender is another flavoring I'd like to try for ice cream. My lavender plants are in bloom at the moment. I even spent some time reading about supercritical fluid extraction. CO2 has a critical pressure of 73.76 bar. My iSi can reach about 2 bar. So much for that. Plan B is to look into culinary essential oils. Though I'd rather do the flavoring myself, if I could.

Fish flavor may be traditional (so I've heard) but it sounds more like what Heston Blumenthal might serve.

[lesliec]

We visted Arzak in San Sebastian a couple of years ago. The bacalao ice cream was memorable - in a good way!

[JoNorvelleWalker]

We visted Arzak in San Sebastian a couple of years ago. The bacalao ice cream was memorable - in a good way!

I somehow like the idea of bay leaf better but I can only dream of dining at Arzak.

[jjahorn]

I've tried a few things recently that were close, but not quite good...

Bubblegum Ice cream - The bubble gum is dissolved in the warm milk for the flavour.

problem #1 - When set, the chewiness of the gum is also present in the ice - like having too much xanthan gum in a recipe...

problem #2 - I wanted to colour it, and the red I used just disappeared without a noticeable change. The recipe I had called for 5 drops (for 1L mix) - and I probably added 1 tablespoon in the end. No change. Are some food colourings better than others for fats?

Mango sorbet - I didn't have enough mango, so I improvised and added grapefruit. Completely overpowered the mango, but I can tell from the little hint that next time a pure mango sorbet will be really good. It is refreshing though.

Question: I want to do a high alcohol ice cream. The recipe I have calls for casein and 21DE atomized glucose. I don't have either...

The casein I can only find from body-builder shops sold by the kilo. Does anyone know of a substitute, or a way to buy small amounts?

I understand that atomized glucose is a mix of glucose and starch - so could I mix 20% glucose and 80% starch to have the same?

Edited August 14, 2013 by jjahorn (log)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I read somewhere (I'm really not sure where) that for bubblegum one had to use bubblegum artificial flavoring, as bubblegum flavor does not exist in nature. For coloring ice cream red I've seen cochineal recommended. Though I don't think I have ever used food coloring in ice cream. (I admit I was tempted to try black food coloring for licorice.) I believe some food colorings are sold specifically for fats. Never tried them though.

Rose Levy Beranbaum and as I recall David Lebovitz have recipes for alcoholic ice cream. I've made Beranbaum's recipe a couple times and it was pretty good. She does not call for any unusual ingredients.

I've seen someone selling atomized glucose in small amounts, and they also sold on Amazon. But it was not there last time I looked for it. I don't think a mixture of starch and glucose would be a good substitute, as atomized glucose has a range of chain lengths. Sorry I have no idea about using casein, but you might get by with substituting non-fat milk powder.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Licorice results!

This was the licorice I cold pressure extracted in cream, as contrasted with the hot pressure extracted licorice in milk that I used for the batch of ice cream in post #30. The procedure was to put 50 g coarse chopped licorice root (basically pieces of wood) into 500 ml iSi and add heavy cream up to fill line. Charge the iSi with one nitrous oxide cylinder. I had intended to let the cream and licorice sit in the refrigerator for 12 hours, but it was more like 36. I released the pressure as quickly as I could and strained the contents through an iSi strainer, which is the finest strainer that I have.

It was a bit of a mess, as the wood had swollen like a sponge, and I lost about a cup of cream. In truth it looked like coarsely chopped up steamer clams in bechamel. I rinsed with 250 ml milk and measured additional cream to 1000 ml total liquid. The reason for 50 g licorice is that MC suggests 5% scaling for licorice and I made the simplifying assumption that 1000 ml equals 1000 g.

The base ingedients and method were the same as usual:

heavy cream 750 ml

whole milk 250 ml

medium/large egg yolks 6

sugar (sucrose) 90 g

trehalose 20 g

kosher salt pinch

About 3:00 in the morning, in pain, after stirring carefully for an hour at temperature (sometimes I wish I had never heard of icecreamscience), I got the mix into an ice bath and then refrigerated for 12 hours. I spun for 20 minutes in my Cuisinart ICE-100 and froze for a few hours.

The texture and consistency was as wonderful as always by this recipe and method. However the flavor was unexpectedly different from the batch of licorice I made last spring, not that the batch last spring was bad.

The first batch had a strong sweet taste from (I believe) glycyrrhizin, the very sweet chemical in licorice, with green flavor notes (and chartreuse color). The current batch has faint glycyrrhizin sweetness with subtile floral, perfumey notes. Color, as far as I can remember, is not as green. The cream from the cold infusion was light caramel brown.

To me licorice root does not have much smell but the flavor is released by chewing it. According to McGee the flavor components of licorice are paeonol and ambrettolide, neither of which is particularly soluable in water or volatile. I am not sure what chemical I am perceiving but I like it. Time for a second bowl.

[Jaymes]

Last weekend, we made the Browned Butter Ice Cream from Christine Ha's book. Fans of Masterchef might recall her as a winner.

I bought her cookbook because I loved the way her food sounded like it tastes. Thus far, have not been disappointed.

Whole family loved this ice cream and we'll definitely make it again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6lCclJH6TY

[bonkboo]

Tried my first ice cream recently and just discovered this. I made avocado sriracha ice cream. Worked okay. Was hoping for more savory then what resulted. Would using less sugar than called for, say half, be problematic?

Thread has gotten me thinking ginger next.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Tried my first ice cream recently and just discovered this. I made avocado sriracha ice cream. Worked okay. Was hoping for more savory then what resulted. Would using less sugar than called for, say half, be problematic?

Thread has gotten me thinking ginger next.

Reducing the sugar in an ice cream recipe is problematic as you change the freezing properties. You could replace all or part of the sugar in the recipe with trehalose to reduce the sweetness. Trehalose is a sugar that has two glucose units and is about half as sweet as sucrose. I would not replace all the sucrose in a normal ice cream recipe, but for a savory ice cream replacing all the sucrose might work. That is the first thing I would try.

Trehalose may not be at the corner grocery. Health food stores might have it. I purchased my trehalose on amazon.

[bonkboo]

Would whole foods likely have trehalose? Thanks for the suggestion. Thinking after the ginger attempt I might try saffron carrot savory.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Would whole foods likely have trehalose? Thanks for the suggestion. Thinking after the ginger attempt I might try saffron carrot savory.

From a bit of googling I see that Whole Foods has trehalose listed as "acceptable" on their acceptable ingredients list for selling at Whole Foods. Whether they actually sell trehalose or not I cannot say.