Did you break out the ice cream maker this weekend? Last Thursday's recipe for Basic Vanilla Ice Cream was intended to get you started. We'll assume this is a weekend project for you so we'll share recipes late in the week, and other important summer ice cream making information earlier in the week.
Today, we have a look at a rundown of the different kinds of ice cream. From French ice cream to sorbet, there are some important differences between all the different desserts we tend to lump into the category of "ice cream."
Ice Cream: has at least 10 percent milk fat. "Premium" ice cream has 13-17 percent. Yum.
French Ice Cream: contains eggs and is cooked first, like a custard.
Gelato: has less air whipped into it than ice cream, so it has a denser consistency.
Sherbet: contains more sugar but less fat than ice cream and is usually flavored with fruit.
Sorbet: same as sherbet, but without the dairy.
(Thanks to the June issue of Everyday Food for the inspiration.)
surprise ! - I found black raspberry trees in jersey city and hoboken. The trees are laden with the fruit and all over the place crushed raspberries lay around the tree.
I made the Coffee Chip ice cream from the recipe posted here earlier. I had some white chocolate on hand, so I added chips of that along with the bittersweet -- it was quite tasty.
I have a bunch of milk and half/half in the fridge that I need to use up before a trip to LA/SF in a few days, so I am going to make orange honey ice cream. I don't have a precise recipe, so I am winging it, with a light basic custard ice cream using milk instead of cream and some reduced fresh OJ. I might add some toasted pistachios, too.
Faith,
That sounds delicious! Take notes and photos - send us the recipe!
I have a question about ice cream. I've only made it once. I made pear ice cream. And what I found was that when it was freshly churned, although it was really soft, it was delicious. But when I froze it, it got all crystally and tasted terrible. It is the fact that I used pear? Or is this just common with home made. Is it meant to be eaten right away and not really stored?
grant - I'm guessing you only used milk in your recipe. To prevent water crystals from forming you need a higher fat content. Using the custard recipe I've been using 4 egg yolks for each quart of liquid. And by liquid, I'm using 1/2 milk and 1/2 heavy cream. I've gotten consistently smoother results.
I agree about the fat content. Also, how did you add your pear? Was it a fruit puree? If you had a high ratio of fruit puree to the milk or cream (i.e. water/juice to fat) then that also will produce something more icy.
My hunch, if you make this again, would be to use fresh pear juice for the flavor, simmered with the sugar into a syrup and added to the cream or custard, then stir in fresh pear chunks at the end of the freezing process. I don't know if that would work though... just a thought.
Also, one tip about storage: I find that my homemade stuff gets less icy when I cover it completely with plastic wrap touching the surface of the ice cream, then with foil, then with the container lid.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just not great at making desserts. I used half milk, half cream, although I only used 3 egg yolks. And then to make the pear puree, I sauteed pears with a little water until they broke down, which I then pureed. I wonder it that was my mistake - using water. I like the idea about the pear juice for flavor and then adding chunks of pear. Thanks also for the tip about storing, Faith. I suppose I will have to try this again. Actually I've seen recipes for ice creams that use herbs, such as basil, which I've always been interested in trying. Does anyone have any experience with anything like that?
Grant -
I have a great recipe for Basil Ice Cream, which I'll be posting soon. It's easy and a wonderful alternative to pesto: that end-of-summer conundrum when it's time to use up the remaining basil.
Grant, I don't have hints about ice cream; but...my best friend makes a 'tea' which is just hot milk in which he adds a couple of basil leaves - it's surprisingly good! He said his mother used to make it like that. simplicity!
Yeah, I think the idea is to get as concentrated a pear flavor as possible, with as little water as possible. So maybe reducing the pear juice down to a syrup with the sugar would work - I am going to try this tonight with my orange ice cream; I'll let you know how it goes!
Let me know too - I would love a good pear ice cream recipe! It's not something you see very often. I wonder if the high water content of pear just makes it more suited to sorbets. I had a pear and ginger chardonnay sorbet last summer at Jeni's Ice Creams in Columbus, and it was wonderful. Click my name for their seasonal flavors - totally inspiring! She's doing a candied beet flavor; *swoon*
I've tried flavoring creams with lavender, lemon verbena, and chamomile (separately!). I've also tried Thai basil, lime, lemon, and ginger syrups, with varying degrees of success. This is one of my favorite things to play around with. I keep meaning to try a basil ice cream too...
Grant - I've actually found that it is temperature and churning time more than fat content that affects consistency. I've made both frozen yogurt (w/low fat yogurt) and gelato (milk, not cream) in the past few weeks and they've kept in the freezer with no crystals for over a week each. The things I've found that really help are these: the mixture needs to be completely chilled i the refrigerator before you put it in the ice cream maker (on Good Eats they explained this has something to do with keeping the ice crystals smaller). Also make sure you don't over-churn - you should have the mixture in the ice cream maker for about 20-30 minutes depending on how much you are making. It will be softer than soft serve, but then you put that in the freezer and it gets to the right consistency. The less air it comes n contact with the better, so plastic wrap on top plus putting it in an air tight container is best. Good luck!
I made the mixture for the orange/honey ice cream last night and pretty much got into a fistfight with natural curdling chemical reactions. I think I needed to cook the juice down into even more of a syrup with the honey before adding the dairy; my kitchen chemistry is a little weak here.
But it still cooked into a custard, and after straining it seems smooth enough. So after I freeze it tonight I will let you know how it goes, and depending on the final result send in a recipe.
are you using orange juice or any other citrus juice or fruit in the recipe, or is it 'orange-blossom honey' ice cream?
dairy + citrus juices + heat = cheese
i'm pretty sure the only way to make citrus flavored ice cream would be to go the non-custard route. which is i think why it's more traditional to see orange, lemon, and lime sherbets and sorbets.
also, regarding pear ice cream, every time i've used fruit juice rather than just straight-up pureed fruit and added sugar, i've ended up with a watery result.
i have no idea what i typed to make it say faith, but actually, that was me up there.
thanks opoponax - yeah, I knew curdling was going to be a problem, but I had this idea, see, that if I cooked the juice down enough and made it very syrupy that somehow - chemistry be damned - I could make a rich orange flavored custard. I have seen recipes for orange custard and should have followed one of them more closely instead of following my vague instincts.
It turned out OK, actually - more like a sherbet than a custard, probably because I used milk instead of cream. But I want to play around with this some more; I am convinced that I can make an orange custard ice cream somehow and now it's a challenge! I think the syrup and the custard need to be chilled before being mixed. Any other thoughts?
personally, i'm on the opposite challenge -- trying to figure out how to incorporate my homemade goat cheese recipe into an ice cream.
fresh chevre ice cream would be so lovely...
i have a feeling that i could remove the curd from the whey, rinse, and chill without doing much of the cheesecloth hanging drip stuff, so that i end up with an extremely soft cheese, then run that through the ice cream machine. i think the cheese result would be too thick, though. maybe i could run that and more chilled goatmilk or heavy cream through the blender and THEN go to the machine. mmmm, chevre ice cream...
You might think about using orange flower water or steeping orange zest in your milk and cream mixture instead of using orange juice (then strain and chill). Boiling down the juice isn't going to get rid of the acid, nor will chilling it first.
For fruit chunks in ice cream, I've found a brief saute in a pan (but with no oil added) and then a marinate in the fridge with some vodka or complementary booze (a few tablespoons) really helps keep the fruit luscious and not icy when you mix it into your ice cream. I add it at the end, when you're nearly to soft-serve consistency. And don't add too much booze, or it will lower the freezing point of the mixture too much.
I've made chevre ice cream and it's delicious, so go for it!
regards,
trillium
i have a GE gel canister ice cream maker and recently broke the paddle/blade that churns the ice cream. does anyone know where i can get a replacement blade?? also, when i make ice cream it is creamy and wonderful just after churning it, but after it sits in the freezer over night the ice cream gets extremely hard and difficult to scoop out. i tried not storing it in the gel canister, but that didn't work. any suggestions??
We just recently bought an ice cream maker and I googled "pear ice cream" (because I LOVE pears) and found this site. All the comments have been helpful, but I hate too much work! So far I've made strawberry ice cream and peach ice cream without making a custard, just tossing into the machine the milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla extract. Then for the last five minutes of churning adding the chopped up fruit. Instinctively I figured that this method wouldn't work with pears, but do you think it would work?
We stored our ice cream in the canister and it got quite hard, too. But no problems with ice crystals or taste.
thanx 4 that facts about ice-cream it help me in my Science Fair Proyect