This week's Creami project was Modernist Pantry's dairy free pistachio gelato
https://blog.modernistpantry.com/recipes/dairy-free-pistachio-gelato/
My first homemade gelato, and also the first time I've tried the gelato program on the Creami.
Served with crystallized dark chocolate crumb ans some store bought preserved cherries. The gelato was great! Perfectly smooth and a wonderful pistachio flavour. For those interested, I used Saracino pistachio paste. Unfortunately, the cherries didn't taste much, so this summer I'll have to try to vacuum ferment some cherries from the trees which have popped up like weeds in my garden...
Also tried a portion with roasted white chocolate and dried apricots:
This time I also recorded the pre and post spin temperatures. Should have documented it with pictures too, but forgot about that untill the last respin:
Pre spin: -20.7°C
After 1 gelato cycle: -12.2°C
After 1 respin: -8.7°C (probably ok at this stage, but it still looked a bit granular
Afrer second respin: -6.6°C
This is the first time I've seen something close to the flat surface the Pacojet seems to create, so I'll definitely try a second respin with other recipes as well. As you can see in the first picture, there are some tiny air bubbles incorporated however. This was the first scoop, made without doing anything to the mixture other than a few minutes rest in the freezer to lower/stabilize the temperature a bit.
On 2/18/2023 at 6:33 AM, andrewk512 said:However, it does highlight an issue with the creami and that is the air gaps it introduces. The ninja sort of whips a vortex through the center of the pint and then my quenelles often have little air gaps in them. I am thinking maybe moving the ice cream to a different pint and pressing it down to get all the air out for using might be my next move.
As I've mentioned before, this is my main gripe with the Creami so far. For a hobby cook/amateur like myself, it's not really a problem if the quenelles are a bit inconsistent (they usually are anyway 😋), but I'm curious to know if it's caused by insufficient blade speed, different post spin temperature, if it's over pressure related, or if Ninja has messed up the blade design or spin cycle parameters?
I've thought about moving it to a different pint too, but I've been worried about incorporating some of the unprocessed ice crystals around the edges, and it's also somewhat inconvenient to always have empty pre chilled beakers taking up freezer real estate 🤔
