Home ice cream - tricks of the trade
We bought the $50 Cuisinart at Bed, Bath, & Beyond and tonight my wife made her inaugural batch - a non-fat peach frozen yogurt sweetened with agave nectar and a dash of maple syrup, plus cinnamon and vanilla.
Me, I'm all about trying to duplicate Cherry Garcia or - my favorite flavor - some sort of peanut butter swirl. I tend toward brown flavors - chocolate, peanut butter, carob, caromel, and such. Colors that imply textures.
My partner has made ice cream in the distant past and I never have. All of your tips and tricks - lessons learned the hard way - would be welcome.
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12 Comments:
A tip that most folks know already: store the bowl in the freezer (assuming you have room) so you're always ready for your next batch.
Lilly Tao at 2:44AM on 03/30/09
Lots of great recipes from david lebovitz. scroll down for the ice cream and sorbets.
andshewas at 10:02AM on 03/30/09
When you have all the control you can make whatever you like.
Firstly make vanilla and get a feel for the machines.
I make a lot of fruit sorbets and I like one in particular
http://www.chocolategourmand.com/blog/?p=62
White peach and raspberry sorbet at the Chocolate Gourmand.
He has a lot of ice cream recipes too. Also a follower of David Lebovitz like most of us. I cut the sugar in the sorbet a bit and it is always a giant hit.
In the summer I made it a lot, my husband begged for it, Grand Mariner was a great compliment to it.
JerzeeTomato at 10:25AM on 03/30/09
Follow some proven recipes before you start messing with the formulas.
In a way, making ice cream is more like baking where formulas and percentages matter, than like cooking where an extra handfull of noodles isn't a big deal.
The amount of sugar and fat affect the way the ice cream will freeze, and affects the final texture of the product. I like a smooth, creamy ice cream, and I don't want to find ice crystals or a grainy texture. To me, there's no point in making a homemade product if it's not going to be great.
Vanilla is a good place to start. There are a lot of recipes and techniques for making a simple vanilla ice cream. Once you find one you like, you can base a lot of flavors off of that, simply by subbing different flavors for the vanilla extract or by mixing in different things. One of my favorites is crushed Thin Mint cookies.
dbcurrie at 12:49PM on 03/30/09
salt
enhances flavor
improves texture
derosa at 12:53PM on 03/30/09
This is kind of a stupid piece of advice, but I've done it before...(keep in mind I'm challenged in the kitchen)...
...make sure your ice cream base is completely cold before you put it in the ice cream maker. I've put it in the machine too early thinking, "Oh yeah it's cold enough, whatever," when I really should've left it in the fridge for another gazillion hours or something. And then it doesn't work. And then I make a sad face.
Robyn Lee at 1:07PM on 03/30/09
what @roboppy said.....best piece of advice you can take...along with using the best ingredients you can use....can't fake it with ice cream!
mepolo at 1:27PM on 03/30/09
Regarding peanut butter, I found that if you melt the peanut butter in the microwave, let it cool, add it to your base, and then BLEND the whole thing - we use our stick blender - it is uber-creamy and perfect - then, of course, bloop in your fudge sauce near the end of freezing time for peanut butter fudgeliciousness. This is a flavor I grew up with from the wonderful Meletharb's in Wakefield MA.
wellred at 3:24PM on 03/30/09
We normally grind our own peanut butter at the co-op from their fresh locally roasted peanuts. My wife was wondering if it would better to break down and get a jar of Jiff or something, for smoothness? Also, the commercial peanut butter has sugar and our organic stuff doesn't.
Ninety-nine per cent of our sweetening, by the way, will be with agave, honey, and/or fresh fruit.
I'm a lousy chemist, but I'm certain that all of these things thrown variables into the equation.
Thanks to all, by the way! We're listening to each comment.
Nursie at 5:30PM on 03/30/09
I actually read a recipe recently in a cookbook that noted the the formula was designed for the regular mass-market peanut butter rather than grind-your-own. It wasn't an ice cream recipe, but it's something to keep in mind. If you're just doing a peanut butter swirl rather than mixing it into the ice cream, it's not going to matter though, since it's not affecting the formula. If you just want a smoother product, whizz it up in the blender.
If you use your grind-your-own peanut butter, you might end up with a different result than intended, but you might like it better than what was intended. It's not like the result is going to be horrible, and if it doesn't set up right, it's possible to thaw it and churn it again with additional ingredients.
If I'm messing with an ice cream recipe, I always taste it before I churn it. Keep in mind that when it's colder, you will taste less because of the cold. Once you get the hang of what it tastes like at fridge temp compared to after it is chilled and churned, you'll get a good idea of how sweet or flavorful it needs to be.
I've also figured out how thick the product should be when it's going into the machine. Too thin and it ends up grainy because of the ice crystals, and too thick and it sets up too fast and probably doesn't have enough air. You'll get a feel for that over time. And what I like may not be what you like.
If you're sweetening with something other than dry sugar, see if you can find recipes that use the honey or whatever, and use those recipes as your jumping-off point. Otherwise you're adding water to the mix, which is going to throw off the formula, and ice crystals aren't very pleasant in ice cream. You might need to compensate by using a higher percentage of fat in the milk/cream mixture, or by adding some kind of thickeners to get it to the right consistency.
Fruit also has a lot of liquid that needs to be compensated for. So look for fruit-based recipes as your guide. Swapping one fruit for another probably won't make a huge difference, as long as the water content and thickness of the puree is similar.
Buttermilk makes an interesting ice cream. I was messing around with that a while back, and the result was similar to a cheesecake flavor.
There are a lot of ice cream recipes and a few decent books on the subject. Chances are that you can find a recipe similar enough to what you're looking for, so that you can adapt it to your taste. That's probably a better way to go at first, rather than just tossing things in and hoping for the best.
dbcurrie at 9:54PM on 03/30/09
PB - I am always shilling this stuff, but Parker Family peanut butter is SOOOO GOOD! In the frig/natural section, and is only peanuts and salt, but does NOT have the gritty "natural" peanut butter texture which I can't stand. You do have to keep it in the frig, but it's ALWAYS soft and spreadable straight out of the frig and does NOT need to be stirred. There's creamy, chunky, and a honey one, but I prefer creamy since chunky has a few too many full halves for my liking. I may have to go grab a spoonful now. :P No, I don't work for them :D
I think I may have the same ice cream maker as you, and my biggest hing (may not apply if it's a different machine) is to turn it on before you pour in the base. With mine if you add the base, then put in the paddle and try to turn it on, whatever is on the sides is already rock solid and the paddle can't turn. I just start it up empty and pour in my base from a big ol' pyrex measuring cup. Yum! A PB&J ice cream that I made once was the best!
MaresyDotes at 11:01PM on 03/30/09
I did in fact go grab a spoonful, and found that it's actually Parker's Farm, not "family". Yum!
MaresyDotes at 11:05PM on 03/30/09