7 hours ago, teonzo said:I don't have direct experience, since here in Italy there's not much request for complicated ice-cream flavors. Most ice-cream for sale is the simple one flavor type (pistachio, hazelnut, lemon, so on). The most complicated one is tiramisu, where the savoiardi are put on top of the bowl, not as inclusions.
Having said this, your goal is to avoid the icy texture on the palate. The main culprit is water of course, but you need to avoid butter in "big" pieces too.
If you want something cookie like then you need stuff with low free water and no big pieces of butter. So it's better to double bake these inclusions: first time you do your normal bake, let them cool, then bake again at about 260-270 F to dry them. This way you eliminate almost all the free water. Avoid the method used for pie crusts in the USA (big chunks of butter in the dough, then it gets rolled). Your best bet is going with the sablé method: mix flour and butter until you get a sandy texture, then add the other ingredients.
Stuff with lots of small air bubbles freezes well, meaning it's still "soft" at frozen temperature thanks to all the air bubbles and the small width of the dough "walls" around the air bubbles. I'm talking about stuff like biscuit joconde and similars, if you freeze them they remain pliable even at frozen temperatures (not as pliable as at room temperature, but still pliable). Angel food cake should be the same.
I would keep far from stuff like pound cakes, the few times I tried eating a frozen piece it was not pleasant.
Teo
Thank you teo!!! You are a wealth of knowledge....so for any cake flavor I should always use an angel food cake base....
do you think sponge cakes and chiffons are out of the question? Or could I tweak them by putting in more leaveners?
i googled s bit and saw that there are a ton of articles on brownies as inclusions that are dense chewy and yet not frozen hard like a rock...what would it be in brownies that would do that? I was thinking probably the cocoa fat
