Home Made Ice Cream (2015– )

[chromedome]

At bottom the difference between heavy cream and half-and-half is basically just water. You could probably reduce your lactose free half-and-half to achieve a similar fat content.

 

There'd probably be a bit of a "cooked" flavor to the end result, but I'm guessing you could mask that with appropriate flavoring ingredients.

[Katie Meadow]

Not meaning to be a downer, since in fact I don't believe I have ever eaten ice cream made with lots of chemical additives. The artisan ice cream we buy in the Bay Area is typically made with organic ingredients; milk, sugar, fruit. My husband makes a fabulous lemon buttermilk sorbet which uses nothing but lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar and buttermilk.

 

When I first met my husband, his father was into making ice cream with a wooden hand cranked bucket that I'm sure he inherited and if I remember correctly, used ice cubes and salt for cooling power. This was in Davis, CA where summer temps could easily go up to 100 degrees. He would use local fruit like peaches and strawberries, cream and sugar. It was really good. It took forever, but he was always a very patient person,  a physicist who grew up on a farm. Probably you learn a lot of patience doing either.

[ccp900]

On 5/21/2020 at 12:45 AM, SeanT said:

Hi all,

 

I'm a new member and have enjoyed reading this topic from the beginning.  I love trying new and improved ways to make ice cream and my ultimate goal is to make a home made version of Baskin Robbins chocolate peanut butter ice cream (chocolate ice cream with peanut butter ribbon).  I've nailed vanilla and still tinker with my recipe here and there. So now I've turned to chocolate peanut butter, but in many efforts haven't been able to produce anything I love yet.   If anyone's willing, I'd appreciate any suggestions for a recipe.  Here's what I have in my ice cream making arsenal right now from memory;  Whole milk 3.5%, heavy cream 18%,  eggs of course, valrhona chocolate disks in varying sweetness, valrhona cocoa powder, inulin, lecithin powser, sucrose, dextrose powder, invert sugar, xanthan, guar gum, maltodextrin powder, gelatin. I'm sure there are a few things I'm forgetting but I'm hoping I can come up with a solid recipe with them.

Hi!! Welcome to the discussion. Lots of passionate people here and they know their stuff....me I’m a poser hahaha. Anyways can I suggest you getting 2 books. One is the latest perfect scoop. Simply because a lot of reviews on the recipes there are good meaning it will give you good results. The second one which for someone like me is more interesting AND will aid you a lot when you want to start being adventurous and spreading your creative wings is hello my name is ice cream

 

i think having those 2 is a great combo. Be warned ice cream will drag you and keep you in its tantalizing delicious arms and you will probably end up buying a lot of things!!  Cookbooks on ice cream become hard to resist and you’ll end up buying a lot just to see what they can do and how they do it.  You’ll prolly look into the jenis books, then van Leeuwen, ample hills, salt and straw, bi rite etc etc etc.

 

youve been warned!!

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Don't forget an homogenizer and a blast freezer.

 

[ccp900]

2 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Don't forget an homogenizer and a blast freezer.

 

See. It’s already starting hahaha Sean will find so many things in his kitchen in the next few months

[paulraphael]

14 hours ago, ccp900 said:

Hi!! Welcome to the discussion. Lots of passionate people here and they know their stuff....me I’m a poser hahaha. Anyways can I suggest you getting 2 books. One is the latest perfect scoop. Simply because a lot of reviews on the recipes there are good meaning it will give you good results. The second one which for someone like me is more interesting AND will aid you a lot when you want to start being adventurous and spreading your creative wings is hello my name is ice cream

 

i think having those 2 is a great combo. Be warned ice cream will drag you and keep you in its tantalizing delicious arms and you will probably end up buying a lot of things!!  Cookbooks on ice cream become hard to resist and you’ll end up buying a lot just to see what they can do and how they do it.  You’ll prolly look into the jenis books, then van Leeuwen, ample hills, salt and straw, bi rite etc etc etc.

 

youve been warned!!

 

I wrote a review of ice cream books, if anyone's interested. The intended audience is people who have already been dragged in deep. Hello My Name is Ice Cream is one of the top picks. 

[ccp900]

11 hours ago, paulraphael said:

 

I wrote a review of ice cream books, if anyone's interested. The intended audience is people who have already been dragged in deep. Hello My Name is Ice Cream is one of the top picks. 

Hi Paul always appreciate your posts there I’ve read your article as well hehe.  Waiting for your next one........maybe the effects of starch and starchy ingredients to your balancing....if you use for example potatoes (that doesn’t sound good) or yams and even rice

 

or maybe even a sort of short masterclass on stab/Emul. Like how to use them for very specific textural effects...for example if you want more chew then a blend of stab 1 and stab 2 would be good

 

another one is breaking down famous brands using their labels. That could be a good exercise and see if we can break down the ingredients and the numbers into a working recipe as well as explain the components

Edited July 9, 2020 by ccp900 (log)

[SeanT]

Thanks CCP900!  I've already read The Perfect Scoop but will add the other to my reading list.  I am definitely in deep already, though I don't have a homogenizer or blast freezer.  I appreiate Paul's expertise and insight and have enjoyed reading the information on his blog, so thank you Paul.  I have a plethora of ingreadients for ice cream making and don't know I could add much to the cabinet other than Trehalose.  As I mentioned before I enjoy tinkering with different recipes to see if I can make ice cream I already enjoy even better.  Still working on the chocolate ice cream with peanut butter and my wife ( who doesn't really like ice cream, gasp!) asked if i could make her some vanilla that came out of the freezer more like soft serve.  She has sensitive teeth and prefers her ice cream in more of a melted state when its less cold.  Challenge excepted!  Thanks everyone for the warm welcome.

[ccp900]

1 hour ago, SeanT said:

Thanks CCP900!  I've already read The Perfect Scoop but will add the other to my reading list.  I am definitely in deep already, though I don't have a homogenizer or blast freezer.  I appreiate Paul's expertise and insight and have enjoyed reading the information on his blog, so thank you Paul.  I have a plethora of ingreadients for ice cream making and don't know I could add much to the cabinet other than Trehalose.  As I mentioned before I enjoy tinkering with different recipes to see if I can make ice cream I already enjoy even better.  Still working on the chocolate ice cream with peanut butter and my wife ( who doesn't really like ice cream, gasp!) asked if i could make her some vanilla that came out of the freezer more like soft serve.  She has sensitive teeth and prefers her ice cream in more of a melted state when its less cold.  Challenge excepted!  Thanks everyone for the warm welcome.

You could formulate your ice cream so that it’s actually at 70% frozen state at higher temps so that your wife can enjoy it more. You might need to let the ice cream warm up before serving but at least the wife doesn’t get melted ice cream for dessert

[JoNorvelleWalker]

My copy of Rose's Ice Cream Bliss arrived today.  I ordered glucose DE 42 to give her recipes a fair shake.  I have no experience with using glucose so it should be fun.  However my cream is not ultra pasteurized so I plan to cook my mix more than she suggests.

 

@ElsieD Rose's mango recipe calls for canned mango, just so you know.  Rose feels Indian canned mango is far superior to fresh.

 

Fun times.

 

 

[ccp900]

1 hour ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

My copy of Rose's Ice Cream Bliss arrived today.  I ordered glucose DE 42 to give her recipes a fair shake.  I have no experience with using glucose so it should be fun.  However my cream is not ultra pasteurized so I plan to cook my mix more than she suggests.

 

@ElsieD Rose's mango recipe calls for canned mango, just so you know.  Rose feels Indian canned mango is far superior to fresh.

 

Fun times.

 

 

That probably has a lot of sugar.  I would say the benefit would be some level of consistency since canned retail products need to taste the same generally....each can needs to be in spec.  This is hard to do using natural mangoes

[ccp900]

Something interesting I saw

 

https://www.gelarecipes.com/gelato-online-course

 

also another book that looks interesting as well

https://www.booksforchefs.com/en/professional-ice-cream-books/185-30-indispensable-ice-creams-jaume-turro.html

 

 

 

theres another book by 4 gelato masters but it’s in Italian.....anyone speak or read Italian here to help in translation hehehe
 

https://www.booksforchefs.com/en/professional-ice-cream-books/254-avanguardia-gelato.html

 

Edited July 11, 2020 by ccp900 (log)

[ElsieD]

17 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

My copy of Rose's Ice Cream Bliss arrived today.  I ordered glucose DE 42 to give her recipes a fair shake.  I have no experience with using glucose so it should be fun.  However my cream is not ultra pasteurized so I plan to cook my mix more than she suggests.

 

@ElsieD Rose's mango recipe calls for canned mango, just so you know.  Rose feels Indian canned mango is far superior to fresh.

 

Fun times.

 

 

 

Interesting.   I am able to buy frozen mango puree at a Mexican store and I imagine that they would have the canned as well.  I bought frozen mango chunks at Costco and didn't care for them.  A number of the chunks were not very ripe, thus not very sweet.   I can adjust for not having 40% whipping cream but not for it not being ultra pasteurized.  I don't know if it is worth my while to get the book  given those constraints.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

2 hours ago, ElsieD said:

 

Interesting.   I am able to buy frozen mango puree at a Mexican store and I imagine that they would have the canned as well.  I bought frozen mango chunks at Costco and didn't care for them.  A number of the chunks were not very ripe, thus not very sweet.   I can adjust for not having 40% whipping cream but not for it not being ultra pasteurized.  I don't know if it is worth my while to get the book  given those constraints.

 

In particular Rose recommends the Ratna brand for mango.  She says: "Many canned brands of mango pulp taste more like peach than mango flavor."  A quick search shows Ratna is available from amazon and from Indian grocery stores.  (But not from amazon.ca.)

 

The way the recipe is written it does not require ultra pasteurized milk or cream.  Not having read much of the book yet, I doubt that anything actually requires ultra pasteurized cream.  I could be wrong but I think what Rose is saying is that you can skip heating the bulk of the cream if the cream is ultra pasteurized.

 

I'm surprised though that you can't find ultra pasteurized cream in Ottawa.  It is all but ubiquitous down here.  And from what I've read ultra pasteurized cream is difficult to avoid in Canada.

 

https://edibletoronto.ediblecommunities.com/eat/whatever-happened-pure-cream

 

[paulraphael]

On 7/9/2020 at 2:20 AM, ccp900 said:

Hi Paul always appreciate your posts there I’ve read your article as well hehe.  Waiting for your next one........maybe the effects of starch and starchy ingredients to your balancing....if you use for example potatoes (that doesn’t sound good) or yams and even rice

 

or maybe even a sort of short masterclass on stab/Emul. Like how to use them for very specific textural effects...for example if you want more chew then a blend of stab 1 and stab 2 would be good

 

another one is breaking down famous brands using their labels. That could be a good exercise and see if we can break down the ingredients and the numbers into a working recipe as well as explain the components

 

 

Hmmm, starches? This hasn't come up. I've never made ice cream with starchy ingredients, and haven't seen anything written on the topic. Did you have something in mind?

 

Regarding stabilizers, I tried to give a sense in the stabilizer article of how the different ingredients work with each other, and their various qualities. In order to go much deeper, I'd have to do the kinds of experimental trials that I just don't have the resources to do. There are just so many variables, and they all interact. 

 

Even testing and comparing commercial blends ... that's a lot of work. And I'm not especially interested in them. It's so easy to roll your own, and then not terribly difficult to make a variation here or there to tweak your results. It's a fair amount of work, to do this—to experiment to get the results that YOU want. But a monumental amount of work to try to create a guide that tells everyone how to get what they want. 

 

I'd suggest using the standard blend on that page as a starting point. Then one variable at a time you change the proportions, or substitute ingredients. 

[paulraphael]

3 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

In particular Rose recommends the Ratna brand for mango.  She says: "Many canned brands of mango pulp taste more like peach than mango flavor."  A quick search shows Ratna is available from amazon and from Indian grocery stores.  (But not from amazon.ca.)

 

The way the recipe is written it does not require ultra pasteurized milk or cream.  Not having read much of the book yet, I doubt that anything actually requires ultra pasteurized cream.  I could be wrong but I think what Rose is saying is that you can skip heating the bulk of the cream if the cream is ultra pasteurized.

 

I'm surprised though that you can't find ultra pasteurized cream in Ottawa.  It is all but ubiquitous down here.  And from what I've read ultra pasteurized cream is difficult to avoid in Canada.

 

https://edibletoronto.ediblecommunities.com/eat/whatever-happened-pure-cream

 

 

In general you'll get better results if you heat the cream along with everything else. This is because the fat globules in the cream need to be heated in order to bind with whatever emulsifying ingredients you're using (lecithin from egg yolk, or whatever). Even if you didn't heat the cream, why would it need to be ultrapasteurized? Any kind of pasteurized is safe enough. 

 

That Edible Toronto article is layers deep in dubious information and conjecture. I'd regard everything it says about carrageenan with healthy skepticism.. Unfortunately the author consulted with a food philosopher, not a food scientist. I'd be very interested in talking to a food philosopher about issues of ethics, free will, the nature of consciousness, or the hermeneutics of Apicius.  But when it comes to evaluating a paper written about carrageenan, you need a scientist. 

 

A food scientist might point out that the only modern scientific literature on earth that finds fault with carrageenan has been authored by Dr. Tobacman and her small team. And that Dr. Tobacman hasn't published on any other topic. And that her studies are low-quality. And that she isn't a scientist. She's seems to have it in for a particular seaweed extract that people have been thickening food with for 500 years. But anyway.

 

Personally, I prefer to not use ultrapasteurized cream, or any cream with carrageenan in it (they put it in low-temperature pasteurized cream, too, because it makes whipping easier). My reasons have nothing to do with safety or conspiracies. 

 

UHT cream has been cooked (very briefly) at a very high temperature, which is hot enough to denature the milk proteins past the point that I think is ideal for ice cream texture. When you denature the proteins to the right degree, they behave as an emulsifier, and help—a little bit—with creamy texture and stability of the ice cream's foam structure.

 

I don't want carrageenan in my cream, either—not because I don't like it, but because I want to be able to control the quantity. I put in my own carrageenan (and my own guar, and my own locust bean gum, and sometimes my own sodium carboxymethyl cellulose). If the dairy has put gums in there too, I'll never know how much, or if it's the same in this brand as that brand, this week as next week. I want a clean slate. Small quantities matter.

 

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

If it wasn't clear I have no love for ultra pasteurized dairy products.  I avoid them whenever possible.  Carrageenan (or perhaps carrageenan and glycerides) in ultra pasteurized cream is disgusting because at best the cream ends up like snot.  I have never, ever seen ultra pasteurized cream for sale without carrageenan and glycerides as additives.

 

I linked the Edible Toronto article only to demonstrate ultra pasteurized cream was readily available in Ontario, if not in Ottawa.

 

But I have nothing against carrageenan per se.  I sleep with a bag of carrageenan in my bedroom.

 

[ccp900]

8 hours ago, paulraphael said:

 

Hmmm, starches? This hasn't come up. I've never made ice cream with starchy ingredients, and haven't seen anything written on the topic. Did you have something in mind?

 

Regarding stabilizers, I tried to give a sense in the stabilizer article of how the different ingredients work with each other, and their various qualities. In order to go much deeper, I'd have to do the kinds of experimental trials that I just don't have the resources to do. There are just so many variables, and they all interact. 

 

Even testing and comparing commercial blends ... that's a lot of work. And I'm not especially interested in them. It's so easy to roll your own, and then not terribly difficult to make a variation here or there to tweak your results. It's a fair amount of work, to do this—to experiment to get the results that YOU want. But a monumental amount of work to try to create a guide that tells everyone how to get what they want. 

 

I'd suggest using the standard blend on that page as a starting point. Then one variable at a time you change the proportions, or substitute ingredients. 

Hi Paul. Oh I agree about the gigantic work if we want to experiment first hand I’m so sorry pls note that I am not demanding you do all the work for us. I was merely trying to suggest topics hehe

 

on starches. Personally I would be interested in how to balance them.  Are they purely solids or do they affect the viscosity enough that you need to work out the stab emul balance you have.  Something like if you make a rice based gelato or even a sweet potato gelato where you don’t just steep but you blend the actual ingredient into the mix
 

on the commercial suggestion I wanted to clarify what I meant to say was commercial ice creams like for example if we take a Ben and Jerry’s pint what can we guess based on the ingredients and nutrition label

 

pls do note I am not pushing for you to do those things I was just trying to make suggestions of possibly interesting topics to write about. I hope you didn’t think I was arrogant enough to do that

Edited July 12, 2020 by ccp900 (log)

[paulraphael]

On 7/12/2020 at 12:19 AM, JoNorvelleWalker said:

I sleep with a bag of carrageenan in my bedroom.

 

 

We may need a separate thread for hydrocolloid fantasies.

[paulraphael]

On 7/12/2020 at 7:31 AM, ccp900 said:

Hi Paul. Oh I agree about the gigantic work if we want to experiment first hand I’m so sorry pls note that I am not demanding you do all the work for us. I was merely trying to suggest topics hehe

 

on starches. Personally I would be interested in how to balance them.  Are they purely solids or do they affect the viscosity enough that you need to work out the stab emul balance you have.  Something like if you make a rice based gelato or even a sweet potato gelato where you don’t just steep but you blend the actual ingredient into the mix
 

on the commercial suggestion I wanted to clarify what I meant to say was commercial ice creams like for example if we take a Ben and Jerry’s pint what can we guess based on the ingredients and nutrition label

 

pls do note I am not pushing for you to do those things I was just trying to make suggestions of possibly interesting topics to write about. I hope you didn’t think I was arrogant enough to do that

 

 

One thing I'd assume about starches is that they're all different. Refined starches are fairly common stabilizer ingredient. Cornstarch has been used forever, tapioca starch is getting more popular. My guess is that something like sweet potatoes would indeed contribute some starchy thickening. But exactly how much and what the properties are would take a bunch of experimenting. It would probably depend on the variety of sweet potato, how it was cooked, and who knows what else. You'd probably just have to be comfortable with some unpredictability in your textures.

 

In some cases with commercial ice creams you can learn a lot from the labels. Ben & Jerries isn't especially high-tech (as far as I know). It's basically a New England style ice cream, and all the relevant info is on the label. They use eggs, high solids, and a stabilizer blend with a lot of guar, to get that dense and chewy thing. Other companies (like Haagen Dazs) use technology in ways that are hidden from the label. I believe they do sophisticated cooking steps to turn the milk proteins into stabilizers. Essentially they're using proprietary molecular science to make the label suggest that grandma churned it at home. I'd love to know more about the process, but they're not talking about it.

 

BTW I didn't think you were being arrogant at all. It's not clear to everyone what's involved in that kind of testing. It's also not clear from my blog that I'm just a guy who makes ice cream a couple of pints at a time ... and who these days eat most of it without help.

[ccp900]

1 hour ago, paulraphael said:

 

One thing I'd assume about starches is that they're all different. Refined starches are fairly common stabilizer ingredient. Cornstarch has been used forever, tapioca starch is getting more popular. My guess is that something like sweet potatoes would indeed contribute some starchy thickening. But exactly how much and what the properties are would take a bunch of experimenting. It would probably depend on the variety of sweet potato, how it was cooked, and who knows what else. You'd probably just have to be comfortable with some unpredictability in your textures.

 

In some cases with commercial ice creams you can learn a lot from the labels. Ben & Jerries isn't especially high-tech (as far as I know). It's basically a New England style ice cream, and all the relevant info is on the label. They use eggs, high solids, and a stabilizer blend with a lot of guar, to get that dense and chewy thing. Other companies (like Haagen Dazs) use technology in ways that are hidden from the label. I believe they do sophisticated cooking steps to turn the milk proteins into stabilizers. Essentially they're using proprietary molecular science to make the label suggest that grandma churned it at home. I'd love to know more about the process, but they're not talking about it.

 

BTW I didn't think you were being arrogant at all. It's not clear to everyone what's involved in that kind of testing. It's also not clear from my blog that I'm just a guy who makes ice cream a couple of pints at a time ... and who these days eat most of it without help.

Thanks Paul. I  was excited to join the 2021 penn state cohort but I guess that needs to wait until 2022 the earliest.  I wanted to learn some more science and I heard the penn state has a great program on theoreticals that discuss characteristics and ingredients and their interrelations

Edited July 13, 2020 by ccp900 (log)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

On ‎12‎/‎4‎/‎2018 at 12:58 PM, ccp900 said:

Hi guys. Short question

 

If cocoa powder breaks down above 90C for full flavor to be released and break down the powder and you want to make a custard based ice cream.  How would you go about pasteurizing it without curdling the eggs? (using a pasteurizer)

 

I cant think of any way so the choices seem to be

1) Pasteurize at 85C and just live with it (or 75C / 65C whatever your pasteurization method is)

2) Totally skip the eggs (which i actually like with chocolate bases) and go Philly

3) Use melted chocolate instead of powder (i am not a fan of this as the chocolate flavor is enhanced greatly by the cocoa)

4) You can technically say bring it up to 90C then back down to a safer temp and mix in tempered yolks but i think thats too much work and i dont think thats possible with the automated pasteurizers

 

AHA i just thought of 1 more

 

5) make a separate chocolate paste and add it to the base before churning

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure if this was ever answered.  Forgive me if I am late.  Modernist Cuisine vol 1 has a time/temperature graph for ice cream pasteurization in the US.  Pathogens die differently in different countries.

 

[ccp900]

1 hour ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

I'm not sure if this was ever answered.  Forgive me if I am late.  Modernist Cuisine vol 1 has a time/temperature graph for ice cream pasteurization in the US.  Pathogens die differently in different countries.

 

Whoa thanks for the tip on pathogens.....

[JoNorvelleWalker]

...in different country's laws.

 

[ccp900]

Paul. What do you use as a container to heat the mix in your sous vide circulator? And temp and time? Do you still do what’s in your blog - ziploc at 75C for 45 mins?
 

I bought a new circulator but I’m afraid the 1 gallon freezer bag from ziplock might break its seams while heating at 72C for 45 mins. I don’t plan to open the bag since I am not looking to evaporate the mix. Have you had this happen to you before?