Ice Cream, Gelato, Sherbet--Cook-Off 11

[a geek]

Did a blueberry custard last night. I roughly did the following:

1.5 pints of very sweet blueberries, 1/4 cup honey, 1/4 cup sugar (ran out of honey), 1/4 cup splenda, 1/4 cup OJ -> simmer for 30 minutes or so, use a potato masher to break up the blueberries

2 cups heavy cream, 1 cup whole milk, 4 egg yolks, 1 vanilla bean opened -> heated to 160 degrees

Then I mixed the two together and placed both in a big glass bowl I keep in the freezer to cool it down quickly (I'm impatient) and tossed the whole thing into the ice cream maker for as long as I could.

I meant to use some evaporated milk in place of the whole milk but I forgot. The whole thing came out perfectly as the blueberries I used were extremely good. Otherwise, probably not worth making.

I didn't take a picture, but visualize a deep purple ice cream. Just the same, right?

[kitchpig]

30% sugar is my rule of thumb for non-anglaise (no eggs) ice cream. And as Andy Roony (sp?) told Martha -'if it's got eggs in it, it's not ice cream, it's frozen custard'.

In my restaurant we use a lot of molds for ice cream (we like odd shapes) and simple pour the base in molds & freeze. The chocolate comes out just like a fudgesicle! We also do our sorbets as popsicles, so we are mostly ice cream machine free (we use an Italian freezer for our bulk ice cream & fillings for ice cream sandwiches) ((25 - 30% sugar for sorbets, 25% for popsicles)).

[bloviatrix]

Calling all geeks here:

My husband just got a new toy: a refractometer, ostensibly for his homebrew habit. This is a gizmo that measures the density of liquids: you put a couple of drops on a glass surface at the end of a tube, close a "door" over the top to make a thin layer, point it at the light, look through the eyepiece at the other end, and read the density in degrees Brix off the scale.

Homebrewers care about density of liquids because by comparing the density of the wort (unfermented beer) with the finished product, one can determine the approximate percent alcohol in the beer. But...it struck me the other day that this refractometer might also be a great tool to check the density of sorbet mixes, to see that the sugar content is high enough that the sorbet won't be icy but low enough that the sorbet will actually freeze. Has anyone out there used a refractometer for sorbet purposes? Will this refractometer (reads from 0 to 32 degrees Brix, I think) measure in the range I'd need? And will my husband be upset with me for prostituting his beermaking tool for other purposes? You don't have to answer that last question.

Thanks,

MelissaH

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I vaguely recall that Bo Friberg talks about degrees brix for sorbet in his book The Professional Pastry Chef: Fundamentals of Baking and Pastry.

[trillium]

I re-did the failed gelato.  Melted it, stirred in unsweetened Valrhona, some cream, cocoa powder, and 4 beaten egg yolks.  It turned out much better--rich, creamy, no ice flakes.  And I managed to make it sugar-free.  I'm sure it will freeze as hard as a rock, but it's very rich.

I'm confused as to the actual definition of gelato, though.  Whenever I've looked it up online, I've found varying, even opposing ideas of what it is.  Can someone enlighten me?

←

The easiest definition is that it is Italian for ice cream.

If you wanted to stretch yourself, you might say that it is, in general, more intensely flavored, has much less air beaten into it, and uses less dairy fat (cream) then traditional American ice creams. The farther south you go, the lighter it gets, in fact, and you can end up with starch thickened gelati.

regards,

trillium

[eje]

Made frozen Vanilla Custard last Saturday to go with homemade Peach Pie. 2 Cups Whole Milk, 2 Cups Cream, 3/4 Cup Sugar, 6 egg yolks, 1 Vanilla Bean, pinch salt. Used procedure from Alton Brown's "Churn Baby Churn 2." I know I wasn't saving money by making it myself, since I could nearly buy 2 pints of Straus Creamery Vanilla for the cost of the Vanilla Bean alone. Sure was tasty, though.

-Erik

[MelissaH]

I vaguely recall that Bo Friberg talks about degrees brix for sorbet in his book The Professional Pastry Chef: Fundamentals of Baking and Pastry.

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If I can ever find a copy of this book to look in, I'll see what he says. I sense an attempt at an interlibrary loan coming on....

MelissaH

[little ms foodie]

I bought the hubby an icecream maker attachment for the KitchenAid for his birthday a week ago.

His first icecream! fresh raspberry using Thomas Keller's base recipe- it was good!!

[artisan02]

I bought the hubby an icecream maker attachment for the KitchenAid for his birthday a week ago.

His first icecream! fresh raspberry using Thomas Keller's base recipe- it was good!!

I just got that attachment also.

Where is the base recipe? I would like to try that...

[silverbrow]

I too got an ice-cream maker for my birthday last week, the Gaggia Gelateria. I used Ben & Jerry's basic recipe plus chucked in cookie dough for good measure. If I say so myself this was pretty darn good.

I wish I could say it was my first try, unfortunately it wasn't. I left the first batch in the machine for too long and forgot to add the vanilla. Not a resounding success, but for a second shot this isn't half bad. Next time I want to try Keller's base, which I'd forgotten about, and full fat milk, none of this pansy semi-skimmed stuff.

Edited August 9, 2005 by silverbrow (log)

[little ms foodie]

I bought the hubby an icecream maker attachment for the KitchenAid for his birthday a week ago.

His first icecream! fresh raspberry using Thomas Keller's base recipe- it was good!!

I just got that attachment also.

Where is the base recipe? I would like to try that...

←

It's just the vanilla ice cream recipe from the Bouchon cookbook, with a half-pint of rasperries (that had sat for a few minutes with just a little sugar on them) added during the last 2-3 minutes of mixing.

It uses whole milk and something like 6 egg yolks!

[viva]

A jubilant ice cream success today. Apricot-Raspberry ice cream.

Inspired by one of my favorite pies - I saw some very pretty apricots at the grocery, and I figured if the apricot and raspberry flavors worked well together in the pie, they'd work well together in the ice cream.

I used the epicurious strawberry ice cream a few pages back as the starting point, but used half & half in lieu of heavy cream. Made the base custard as outlined in the directions, but I left the microplaned zest in the custard. Let the custard chill overnight.

For fruit, sliced up about 7-8 apricots, 1/4 cup or so of sugar, a couple of squeezes of lemon for juice, and a couple of glops of Cointreau. Same treatment for the raspberries. Let the fruits macerate overnight.

Pureed the apricots in the morning and mixed with the custard, then poured into my ice cream maker. Meanwhile mashed the raspberries with a fork so they'd be a bit chunky and mixed in near the end, just enough to distribute evenly.

The whole thing was a lovely peachy pink with small flecks of apricot gold and larger chunks of berry fuschia. Nice smooth creamy apricot flavor offset with the berry tartness.

I ate a big bowl while sitting in the sun on the top step of my pool.

Summer.

[Eden]

you can tell it's raspberry season Viva, that apricot-raspberry combo sounds wonderful!!!

Here's Bill's latest dreamy concoction:

This is raspberry icecream made with just a splash of black currant puree to intensify/support the raspberry flavor.

The sauce is a mix of raspberry & black currant purees with pure-fruit strawberry jam.

I am the luckiest wife in the world...

Oh and we just picked up a delonghi self-freezing unit & will start trying it out tomorrow! I'm very excited!

[Chufi]

I am the luckiest wife in the world...

←

with a husband who makes you that, I have to agree!

here's my blackberry oatmeal crumble ice cream:

I used to make this with homemade vanilla icecream.

You make an oatmeal crumble my mixing together equal amounts of melted butter, oats and sugar (say, 50 grams of each). Spread this on a baking sheet and bake in a hot oven for about 10 minutes, watching it does not burn, until golden and crispy.

Leave to cool and crumble into bits..

Stew blackberries with sugar to taste, and puree (strawberries and raspberries also work very well). Push through a sieve if you don't like the pips.

When the icecream is almost ready, fold in the chilled fruitpuree and the crumble. Fold carefully so you get a nice ripple effect. Freeze until firm.

Now, since my icecream maker died, I just make this by softening some good storebought vanilla icecream, and folding the fruitpuree and crumble into it.

Mmmm it's good..

[kanljung]

Calling all geeks here:

My husband just got a new toy: a refractometer, ostensibly for his homebrew habit. This is a gizmo that measures the density of liquids: you put a couple of drops on a glass surface at the end of a tube, close a "door" over the top to make a thin layer, point it at the light, look through the eyepiece at the other end, and read the density in degrees Brix off the scale.

Homebrewers care about density of liquids because by comparing the density of the wort (unfermented beer) with the finished product, one can determine the approximate percent alcohol in the beer. But...it struck me the other day that this refractometer might also be a great tool to check the density of sorbet mixes, to see that the sugar content is high enough that the sorbet won't be icy but low enough that the sorbet will actually freeze. Has anyone out there used a refractometer for sorbet purposes? Will this refractometer (reads from 0 to 32 degrees Brix, I think) measure in the range I'd need? And will my husband be upset with me for prostituting his beermaking tool for other purposes? You don't have to answer that last question.

Thanks,

MelissaH

←

I've never used a refractometer myself, but I've got a book in swedish which talks a little about the sugar content in sorbets. The book is called "Kockarnas Kalender" and according to the chef Anders Dahlbom the sugar content of a fruitbased sorbet should be 17 degrees Baume (~31 Brix) and 14 degrees Baume (~25 Brix) for wine based sorbets.

[MelissaH]

I've never used a refractometer myself, but I've got a book in swedish which talks a little about the sugar content in sorbets. The book is called "Kockarnas Kalender" and according to the chef Anders Dahlbom the sugar content of a fruitbased sorbet should be 17 degrees Baume (~31 Brix) and 14 degrees Baume (~25 Brix) for wine based sorbets.

←

Ah, that helps. I'll have to give it a try, next time I make a sorbet. Thanks!

MelissaH

[kanljung]

A couple of days ago I made a rather small batch of raspberry/redcurrant sorbet from some leftover berries I had around.

The fruit had been macerated for a while so there was a lot of liquid. I thus decided that I wouldn't make a sugar syrup and add to the fruit. Instead I pureed the fruit and strained it. I then added vanilla scented sugar and heated it to dissolve the sugar and then chill it again. I used about 300g of fruit and 30g of sugar.

I then churned it in a Phillips ice cream maker. Since the batch was so small it frooze very unevenly, so I put the batch in a tub, stirred it with a fork and put it in the freezer for a final freeze.

Yesterday we had the sorbet together with some bitter dark chocolate shavings. It was very intense and maybe a little on the sweet side.

The next time, I would like to make some pistachio gelato.

[Eden]

we had some peaches macerated in Sauternes lying around in the fridge that we just weren't going to finish (too much for 2 people) so this weekend we pureed them, added a little fruit & tossed them in the new-ice-cream maker - VERY tasty!

Chufi, I love that blackberry oatmeal crumble, we'll have to try it.

[viva]

Eden, that peach ice cream sounds really nice. And Chufi, I love the blackberry crumble idea. It looks delicious. I'm thinking you could pretty much take any of your favorite baked cobbler/crumble recipes and turn it into ice cream.

I wonder if you could add baked pie crust pieces to ice cream? You know, something flaky with a bit of sugar baked on top? The crust might get soggy...

[little ms foodie]

dayne made dulce de leche gelato!! here a scoop served with a bit of the raspberry ice cream from a few days ago

sorry it's blurry! I was in a hurry to eat it!

[pounce]

This is my first post on this board. I've been reading a lot of the threads and want to contribute my experiences with my new Cuisinart Ice Cream maker. I wanted to get one of the automatic machines, but settled for a prefreeze model due to cost restrictions and the fact that I thought I would make too much ice cream with an automatic.

I've always loved making ice cream. My first memory of making ice cream was actually making 'snow ice cream' from freshly fallen snow, cream, sugar and a splash of vanilla. I'd mix this up in the largest mixing bowl I could find and in one sitting try to consume the whole batch before it turned into slush...mmmm. For many years I was living in California and hadn't seen the snow. I just moved to Chicago and most people are going out of their way to tell me I will learn to hate the snow. I don't know. I may not be making snow ice cream out of what falls downtown, but I'll be thinking about it It's strange I never worked in an ice cream store as a kid really. My sisters first job was at Baskin and Robins and then in college worked at DanKens (small gourmet ice cream shop in Seattle) with the founders. At Dankens I got to watch my sister make batches in a 10 gallon machine in the window of the store. Cool.

Being the kind of person that likes to read the directions only after failing to put something together with common sense I've concocted my own recipes for ice creams. I prefer ice milks or Gelato's over than super creamy or heavy ice creams (often making myself an outcast when it comes to a group buying decision at the market) so I use at most 1/2 and 1/2 in my mixes.

One of my current inventions is "Thai Iced Tea" gelato. When I was living in San Francisco there was a Thai/Asian grocery store down the street so I am stocked up on the 'official' tea mixture for Thai Iced Tea. If you buy this stuff be careful with it. Treat is like you were working with Black ink over white silk. This stuff stains anything. I'm not sure what's in it or even if it's safe for human consumption since it came in a big clear bag with no label, but it tastes the part. I make what appears to be a basic gelato base (now that I have read some recipes). I sweeten this about 20% more than a normal gelato to give it that authentic over sweetness of the iced tea. After I heat up the milk I dump about 4 tablespoons of the tea mixture into a French press and poor in about a cup and a half of the hot milk. I let this steep maybe 10 minutes while I mix up the yolks and sugar. I put everything back on the stove and finish, then into the fridge. The next day (usually before running off to work) I put the mixture in the machine for about 30 minutes or until thick enough that the blades are leaving voids while spinning. I then transfer this to a Pyrex cake pan that I've chilled in the freezer, smooth and cover with wrap and return to the freezer. Now, this product is good as it is, but I've been playing with a second layer to get the look of the Thai Iced Tea in my ice cream. At the moment I've tried simply taking sweetened condensed milk and 1/2 and 1/2 and putting it right into the machine. This layered on top of the other mixture and then 'sliced' into bowls for serving is really nice. The look is like Thai Iced Tea and sample has the basic milky flavor of the cream with the tea flavor reaching around and poking your tongue. I'm still perfecting the mix though. My next try will be without egg yolks. I'd like to brighten up the tea flavor a little more and I think the yolks are too heavy. Maybe someone has a suggestion? For the cream layer I might try a simple less sweet cream mixture that is a little more creamy. I'll take some pictures after I make a fresh batch and post them.

My most basic attempt so far is Sorghum 'ice cream', but it's maybe my favorite. 3.5 cups 1/2 and 1/2, 1 cup dry milk powder, 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup real sorghum. It's all mixed without cooking and tossed into the maker. Some people might not like the texture as it's not creamy creamy, but I really like the effect is has in the mouth. Yum. Reminds me of my grandmother making sorghum cookies.

I've also taken the sorghum mixture and during the last bit of the freeze added a mixture of spiced rum and raisins that have stewed overnight. The best rum raisin I've ever had. The raisins rehydrated in Rum give a nice kick.

Anyway, I hope people find this interesting. If anyone has any tips or suggestions for the newbie I'm all ears..er eyes

[Chris Amirault]

Welcome, pounce! Great first post! Now: where the heck are the photos of this fantastic sounding thai tea ice cream?!?

[bloviatrix]

Last week I made Claudia Flemming's Black Peppermint ice cream. The recipe is very simple: 3 cups whole milk, 1 cup heavy cream, 1 ounce fresh peppermint, 12 egg yolks (yes, you read that right) and 1 1/4 cups sugar. Considering the amount of fat I was pleasantly suprised to find that there was no graininess in the finished product or chunks of "butter" which can come from churning. It's really good, but too intense on it's own. So, I made chocolate sauce to drizzle on top.

I should point out that the color of the finished product is yellow-ish due to all the egg yolks. No green tint from food coloring.

And what to do with all the egg whites - meringues! and egg white omelettes.

[FoodMan]

I saw Alton Brown's new ice cream episode of Good East the other day and I decided to give his "premium" ice cream recipe a spin. I decided to use his vanilla base and make a Blackberry version. I made a blackberry syrup using a 14 oz package frozen pulp and about a cup of sugar. I added that to the cooled ice cream base. When churning I also addedsome bittersweet chocolate shavings. It was excellent and scooped wonderfully after a 24 hour chill. I will certainly use this ice cream base again. Next time I would make a more concentrated syrup though becuase the berry flavor was not assertive enough.

I served it in a Vacherin and topped it with chocolate sauce.

Elie

[Eden]

Modifying Foodman's idea a little, we tried Alton's new vanilla ice-cream recipe and swirled through some sweet raspberry coulis

This recipe is much better than Alton's last vanilla ice-cream. Really nice texture (so far, we haven't let it harden yet) and great flavor. This stuff is like the best commercial vanilla you've ever had. it's not as intensely vanilla as say the vanilla sorbet Bill made for me last week with several fresh vanilla pods, but it's really good, and a perfect base for building up other flavors.

I got Bill one of the whisks with a thermometer built in for his birthday & he's been going crazy with custard based ice-creams ever since - my life is so rough

[MelissaH]

I made ice cream yesterday. My recipe was one from Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer, and she calls it "baci" flavor: chocolate hazelnut. I didn't take pictures, because my hands were occupied with the ice cream and most of my work area was covered with equipment and ingredients so I didn't have a safe resting place for the camera. I'm not sure if I did something wrong, but here's what happened. Complete recipe here.

So, following the instructions but not quite in the order she specified, I made the custard on Saturday evening. I started by melting 4 ounces of 70% chocolate, and then setting it aside to cool until I was ready for it. I used Rapunzel brand chocolate, because that's what I had on hand.

Then, while the chocolate cooled, I whisked the 4 egg yolks and 6 Tbsp. sugar together until light and ribbony. (I don't quite get why it's important to get them to a ribbon, though: it pretty much deflates in the next step.) While this was happening, I heated 2 cups of heavy cream and a splash of 2% milk to the boiling point. (The original recipe said 2.25 cups of heavy cream. In fact, nearly all her ice cream recipes from this book call for 2.25 cups of cream, so this must be something "nice" in the metric system, or at least a normal quantum of cream for sale in the UK. This being the US, where cream is quantized in cups, I filled in the last quarter cup with the highest fat milk I had in my fridge.)

Once the cream reached the boiling point, I used about a third of it to temper the ribbony egg yolks, which I then added back into the pot of hot cream. I then whisked in the melted and cooled chocolate, and then 2 Tbsp. dutch-processed cocoa. In a divergence from the recipe, I put the pot back on medium highish heat, and actually brought the pot up to a boil, and then poured the contents of the pot through a sieve into a 4-cup Pyrex measuring cup. Nigella says to use a much lower heat and go only until thickened, with no mention of a sieve. I don't have that kind of patience, and in my experience, lumps can happen even on low heat. I learned long ago that it's best to make sure the ice cream mixture winds up in something with a spout!

I then whisked in 7 ounces (by weight) of Nutella, and 2 tsp. of Torani hazelnut syrup, and only slopped a tiny little bit on the counter. Even before the Nutella, the mixture was looking more like pudding than ice cream base to me. By the time the Nutella was completely incorporated, it was still pourable but almost to the consistency of soft serve, albeit significantly warmer. It tasted really good, but I knew this would be something to serve in very small portions.

Nigella says to cool in an ice bath, stirring every so often to avoid forming a skin on top. I didn't have enough ice to make an ice bath, so I just left it out for a little bit with plastic wrap pressed directly onto the surface so I didn't have to stir. Nigella doesn't say this, but I like to put my ice cream mixes into the fridge overnight (or at least for a few hours) to chill before churning them. So, into the fridge it went! Total mix volume was on the order of 3.5 cups.

Yesterday morning, I got the freezer bowl out of the deep freeze and assembled the ice cream maker (Cuisinart brand). I got the ice cream mix out of the fridge, pulled the plastic wrap off the top, and was left with a semisolid clump of delicious goo that stayed put even when I turned the measuring cup upside down. I called my husband, turned the ice cream maker on, and the two of us (each armed with a silicone spatula) managed to transfer most of the goo into the freezer bowl. We left one of the spatulas in the mixing bowl next to the ice cream maker, and let it go...and go...and go. We tasted every so often, and noticed that the color did lighten up somewhat as air got incorporated, although the ice cream never did feel particularly frozen or cold to our tongues. I usually know the ice cream is done when the motor changes sound. After 40+ minutes, the motor still sounded the same but the ice cream hadn't changed much since the last taste test, so we declared it done. I scraped the stuff into a Rubbermaid container, pressed a piece of plastic wrap onto the surface, sealed the container, and put it into the deep freeze to finish hardening.

After licking the dasher and the spatula (but not the freezer bowl) clean, I knew that we not only needed to serve this stuff in tiny portions, we needed something else with a contrasting texture and taste to go with. So I whipped up a batch of yeast waffle batter and stuck it in the fridge. This wasn't my best batch: in the process of trying to rush things along, I wound up developing much gluten, which resulted in a much thicker batter. From the batch of batter, I only got 4 very dense waffles that didn't spread much inside the waffle iron rather than about twice that many light, airy waffles that disappear into a cloud of crunch and ooze batter down the sides of the iron. I need to remember next time that if I need to rush waffles along, I must put the batter into the fridge in a container larger than 8 cups, so I don't have to beat it down three times over the course of a couple of hours to avoid having it grow out of the container and down the sides onto the refrigerator shelf. They tasted fine, but the texture contrast wasn't quite what I usually get and what I hoped for.

Finally, after 6 hours in the deep freeze, we'd eaten dinner and were ready for dessert. As each waffle came out of the waffle iron, I broke the large square into 4 smaller squares (but because the waffle batter didn't spread like it usually does, the waffle quarters weren't squares so much as quarter-rounds), put two in a bowl, and added a quenelle of the ice cream. A sprinkle of chopped hazelnuts to finish it off, and it was ready to serve. Between four of us, I think we ate a total of about 6 spoonfuls of the ice cream (and all four waffles). It had marvelous flavor, but was sooooo rich! The waffles were absolutely necessary in this case, to contrast both flavor- and texture-wise.

We're already thinking that we'll make the recipe again, but with some tweaks. For one thing, the egg yolks and Nutella add fat, so we're thinking we could use half-and-half (or possibly part half-and-half and part whole milk) rather than all heavy cream. I think for me, next time I'd also let the ice cream maker churn in some hazelnuts right at the very end. Or I'll just make sure the waffle batter is thin enough and add the hazelnut pieces to the waffle batter. I'm after something a little lighter and with a colder mouthfeel, yet I'd also like to keep the velvety mouthfeel that comes (at least in part) from having fat in the mix. I'm also curious to try adding a little hazelnut syrup to a chocolate ice cream base without Nutella, to see how much flavor you get from the syrup and how the Nutella affects the base thickness. And who knows: maybe I'll get lucky and the physics department will have some extra liquid nitrogen kicking around later this semester!

MelissaH