Hot answers tagged ice-cream
27
Yes, actually, there are two magic ingredients: Guar gum and Xanthan gum.
Guar gum is a thickener, but in small quantities can also prevent the growth of ice crystals which would cause the ice cream to harden into icicles.
Xanthan gum is a stabilizer which helps keep air (called overrun) in the mixture. Air is generally churned into ice cream by ice cream ...
20
The magical ingredients for commercial ice cream are stabilizers, emulsifiers, and really good freezers. As Aaronut notes, stabilizers can go a long way... Personally, watching a bowl of ice cream melt without losing its shape makes me a bit uncomfortable, so... use in moderation.
But if you don't happen to have any gum available, here are a few suggestions ...
15
First of all, the names vary a bit from country to country, or the ingredients do.
I'll explain the most common names/ingredients.
The main difference is in the ingredients used. Sorbet is basically water + sugar + fruit, while ice cream and gelato is milk/cream + sugar + fruit. So the last two are more 'creamy', while sorbet is more 'icy'.
You can say ...
13
If the ice cream mix is setting up but tending to leave a buttery coating in your mouth the best thing would be to try cutting back on the cream and replacing it with whole milk or half & half.
If it's a recipe that you've used in another machine with great success but it doesn't seem to in this one, it's probably a case of how long the frozen bowl is ...
13
You will have to find a way to separate the batches of ice cream, or you'll end up with the uniform purple, as you mentioned.
The proper way is to prepare three batches, using different food coloring in two of them. They should come out of the machine with a soft-serve consistency. Hold the first batches in a cool environment while preparing the last ones, ...
11
If you make homemade strawberry ice cream, the color is likely to be very, very pale, approaching white. Green food coloring in your mix should do the trick.
It would be very difficult to retroactively turn commercial ice cream a different color. The pink is almost certainly from food coloring, and mixing in another coloring would be very difficult ...
8
My cub scouts love to make camp out ice cream. You will need two cans, one significantly larger than the other both with lids (we use a #10 coffee can and a small coffee can). Make sure the small, inner can is clean and fill 2/3 of the way with an ice cream or custard mix (it will expand with churning as air is added). Place small can inside of larger can ...
8
You say that they were frozen with the stones? I think it is the freezing of the stones that caused it. The stone is where most of the "artificial", almondlike flavour sits, just like with apricot pits and almonds. I bet that when they were frozen, some of them cracked and [insert correct name of flavour agent] seeped out into the flesh of the fruit.
8
I don't have any direct experience to share, but it seems a little logic may be applicable. I suggest that your hot fudge is too hot and your ice cream is not icy (cold) enough.
Rather than microwaving the fudge, try a hot water bath on the stove. Yeah, it's slower, but you also won't burn the bejeezus out of the sugar at the edges. Taste occasionally while ...
8
Eat it faster.
Seriously. I am a huge fan of homemade hot fudge and much of the appeal is the contrast between the cold and the hot. Freezing your ice cream more solid will help but insufficiently heating the chocolate won't. If the fudge gets too cool it sets up into one solid chewy chunk.
Perhaps your best solution would be to serve smaller portions ...
8
In a literal sense, rumtscho and SAJ14SAJ are right.
However, if you're willing to be a little adventurous, then you can do this! and without an ice cream machine. And it'll be a fun party trick, to boot.
First, buy strawberry ice cream with real strawberries that isn't fully pink (like Haagen Dazs).
Second, use pistachio colouring/paste, it's full ...
7
When I've done this in the past, I did two things differently.
I used more of a fudge sauce that would thicken and get somewhat firmer when cold. Like a fudge sauce or such. Syrup just mixes too easy.
Mixing a swirl into a deeper container like the churning tub proved somewhat diffcult. As I tried to swirl, it would mix instead. Instead, I spread the ...
7
For a substance to burn, it must first reach its ignition point. For it to keep burning, it must reach its fire point. The ignition point of a 40% ABV liquid such as brandy is 26ºC/79ºF, and the fire point is approximately 10ºC higher than that.
What this means in practical terms is that you need to heat the alcohol a little first before you add it to the ...
7
The general things that can cause icy sorbet:
Too much water Compared to other ingredients. Since you probably aren't going to take water out of your fruit, you pretty much have to add sugar or alcohol to compensate for this. This is tricky if you're improvising, and if the water content of the fruit varies.
Bad churning/freezing: This is mostly determined ...
6
I'm seeing several answers that seem to be tiptoeing around the problem but not quite hitting it head-on...
If you have time, have a look at this Serious Eats article, The Food Lab: Real Ice Cream Without an Ice Cream Machine. Although it's about making ice cream without a machine, many of the principles apply to machines as well, because the problem ...
6
Don't. Ice cream is hard. It melts slowly. Instead, focus on scooping.
Get the largest spoon you have, or ideally, an ice cream scoop. Fill up a cup with boiling water, or as hot as your faucet will get it. Dip spoon/scoop in the water. Scoop. Dip. Scoop. Shake off excess water as you go.
Like a hot spoon through ice cream.
6
The best way? Plan better. :)
The microwave is rarely a good plan for quick defrosting, as you found out. I would suggest putting the container in warm to hot running tap water.
The warmer the water is the faster it will melt, but it will also melt more unevenly - though nothing like the microwave. The important part is that the water is running, and is at ...
6
The softness of ice cream is going to depend on a variety of factors:
Use of gums and other binding agents, amount of sugar, the amount of fat, and especially the amount of "overrun" (air) that is churned into it during the freezing process. Less expensive ice creams will usually have a softer "chewier" texture than premium ice creams due to more gums and ...
6
Soft serve ice cream is soft because:
It's warmer than hard ice cream. According to Wikipedia, it's generally made at about -4 C, rather than -15 C for hard ice cream. It's also served at a higher temperature -- 14 to 25 degrees F, compared to 5 to 7 degrees F for hard ice cream.
It contains more air. The technical term for air introduced during freezing ...
6
Restaurants solve this problem one of two ways:
Tough, professional-grade stainless or Lexan containers. I suggest 4" to 6" deep 1/6 size hotel pans AKA steam table inserts, or lidded 2-4 quart Cambro containers.
Cheap, disposable quart delitainers. These are actually reusable and dishwasher/microwave safe, but at $0.25-0.50 apiece, it doesn't matter ...
5
Eggs!
Try a recipe with eggs (especially freshly plucked from the chickens you have living in your back yard as we do). My wife and I discovered this butter pecan recipe a few months ago and were quite pleased. We subsequently tried a chocolate recipe with eggs (as well as melted chocolate instead of powdered) and were quite pleased with that as well. ...
5
Also look at McGee.
The basic method is to put sweetened cream and milk, or any other ice cream mix, into a plastic freezer bag, and the bag into another bag containing salted ice.
Thirty minutes and a few vigorous shakes later, the mixes were firm enough to serve.
5
"Completely" definitely isn't a standardized term; however, since we're talking about making ice cream here, the correct answer is going to be "as cold as possible without freezing".
When making ice cream, it's important to get the mixture as cold as possible before you freeze it, especially if you're not using an ice cream machine, so that you give it as ...
5
If you add coriander, it should be because you agree with Mr. Weeks's assertion that it has a particular affinity with blueberry. Freshly ground coriander has a vibrant citrusy aroma, and (though I haven't tried it), I can see how it would go well in blueberry ice cream. I've found that sometimes a single flavor can be a little monotonous, and the coriander ...
5
To my knowledge wasabi paste is just wasabi powder that has had the water added to it by the factory. So if you are looking at paste vs powder I would go powder. The question to me would be to make it a paste before you add it to your ice cream base or to add the powder directly to the ice cream base. I would venture to say you should be just fine adding ...
5
Because the recipe writers were used to those methods--seriously.
According to Harold McGee, in his On Food and Cooking (revised) beating eggs and sugar until they are pale--or even until they thicken--is only useful to indicate that the sugar is fully dissolved. Otherwise, it makes little difference to the outcome of recipes.
4
If they are crunchy when frozen they are probably made from regular compound chocolate, not freezing grade chocolate
You should be able to buy compound chocolate "chips" from any food wholesaler or baking supply store. They are the same as used in chocolate muffins
For frozen chocolate to still have a chocolate feel and taste when eaten it needs to be made ...
4
Fat, fat, fat! You need something to keep the water content of the ice cream from forming a big block when it freezes. Commercial ice cream is made in freezers that inject air, thus making them fluffy--the amount of air injected is called overrun.
Since you don't have an air-injection system, your best bet to separate those little ice crystals is to ...
4
Similar to the technique Janelle outlines you can do the same thing with zip-loc bags.
Fill a smaller one with the ice cream mixture and a larger one with ice and rock salt. Put the smaller inside the larger and then 'massage' the bags until ice cream is made. you can do this with your feet whilst you watch TV.
4
This really depends on your freezer and your icecream bowl. Usually the instructions will have a suggested freeze time on them...In my experience, however, it's usually 6-8 hours at a minimum.
If you need to make multiple batches, it is ABSOLUTELY worth your money to get another bowl.
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