38 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:For my next trick, I made honey thyme frozen yogurt. The result was a bit sweeter than I'd prefer. I suppose that's partly the nature of a honey-flavored mix and thyme helped balance out the sweetness so I'll call this successful, if not at all perfect.
This was a modification of the Honey Chai Frozen Yogurt in Hello, My Name is Ice Cream. Instead of infusing the milk & cream with chai spices, I used thyme. Almost all the thyme ice cream recipes unhelpfully give the amount of thyme in "sprigs" but this one calls for 30-40g for what's probably ~ a 1 qt batch. Thyme varies a lot by variety, age, etc. but at least this gave me a starting point. I used 20g for a half batch, ~ 1 pt. When I tasted the mix before freezing, I thought it was both too sweet and too much thyme. If I'd had more yogurt, I'd have mixed up some neutral base to mix in but I was out so I just froze it as it was. As mentioned, the end result was still quite sweet but the thyme seemed more mild and overall helped balance the sweetness.
I wouldn't mind trying this again with different sorts of honey. I used orange blossom honey here. I've got cherry blossom honey that's lovely but delicate and avocado honey that's very dark in color and has a much stronger flavor that might work.
Another great flavor combination! Looking at your link I wonder if they weighed the thyme or if their scale had good enough resolution for precision, 40g for 1 quart definitely seems like a lot.
Yesterday, I did the amazake sorbet from here: http://www.recipewisdom.com/recipes/koji-manzanita-berries/ - much better than the koji sorbet given the flavor was a lot more subtle. I think this would be nice in a fruit dessert. It also might be even better textured with milk/as an ice cream, maybe in the future I will try it again
I also made a chardonnay sorbet, flaming the chardonnay of all its alcohol and then rediluting it to its original weight with water and adding similar thickeners/stabilizers to my watermelon post. It was a little too soft post-processing, I am going to see how the texture does once it firms up in the freezer. Unfortunately cause the chardonnay flavor is so light, the maltodex comes through and is not desirable at all. I will probably try again without maltodex when I have another open bottle of wine and if it turns out good I'll post the recipe. I also purchased some ultrasperse 3 today, which I have never tried before, to see if it has a better flavor and could be used in place of maltodextrin. I am not sure why I am so obsessed with making creamy sorbets when I have no aversion to milk products, but the battle goes on...
