My first spins of the summer-y-ish season last night:
Both of them from Jeni's Splendid.
One the left, The Buckeye State Ice Cream - Honeyed Peanut Ice Cream With Dark Chocolate Freckles.
On the right, Roasted Strawberry & Buttermilk Ice Cream.
Allow me start by saying: her ice creams are so damn sweet. Too damn sweet for me, I think. But the end result, once you get past the tooth shattering sweetness...two pretty lovely ice creams, both in texture and flavor. Happened to have good strawberries, and a brief roasting to concentrate their flavor, made that the favorite of the two.
The peanut butter and chocolate presented the issue of add-ins, as melted and mostly cooled chocolate is supposed to be poured into the machine before the ice cream fully sets, allegedly turning the chocolate into "freckles" during the final few minutes of spinning. With the Whynter machine, spinning was paused and chocolate poured in. The only problem was that the machine then didn't want to spin any more; I'd obviously waited too long to add the chocolate, so I simply smushed it up with a wooden spoon as I was moving the ice cream to its freezer container. Significant Eater was happy, as she got giant hunks of high-quality chocolate in her bowl.
The strawberry buttermilk combo - just great, with that tiny hint of tartness from both the buttermilk and strawberries (along with a bit of lemon juice added to the strawberries when they get blended).
I could certainly see cutting the sugar by 10 - 20% without a problem, since both cream cheese and cornstarch are used for texture and these had zero crystallization. That may become an experiment soon.
