Tuesday, August 21, 2007

How to make ice cream softer

How to make ice cream softer is a bit of a problem since usually when you make homemade ice cream it will come out hard and crystalized. Crystals are caused when the water in the ice cream is allowed to warm up (even slighty) and then refreeze. If, during the process of making your ice cream, you don't shake it enough, it'll for crystals. This will make the ice cream have a hard, grainy texture and will also detract from the taste slightly too. You can duplicate this by taking a scoop of ice cream out of the freezer into a bowl, let it melt, then pop it back. Take it out again and you'll see that most of the water has seperated from the fat and as such there are large ice crystals.

So, how to make ice cream softer? Luckily there are a number of methods and they're all pretty simple and straight forward. Here are just a few.

1. Replace the sugar.
Sugar doesn't freeze and as such it's important to get the quantity correct. Replacing the sugar in your recipe with honey or corn syrup will produce a softer, creamier ice cream.

2. Fat & Gelatin.
You can add gelatin (available from most supermarkets) to your recipe to produce smoother ice cream.
You can also up the amount of fat in your recipe by adding egg yolks, substituting cream for whole fat milk, etc.

3. Add alcohol.
While I personally don't like adding alcohol to my foods, even just a couple of tablespoons of a high proof alcohol can help your ice cream become much smoother. The reason, again, is that alcohol doesn't freeze (put some whisky in the freezer and you'll see).

4. Freezing the ice cream at a higher temperature will also help you make smoother ice cream. If you don't want to adjust the dial on your freezer, store it nearer the door (warmest part of your freezer).

How to make ice cream just right is a bit of a balancing act but by trying out a few of these different techniques you can get excellent results.





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Monday, August 20, 2007

9 random facts you didn't know about ice cream!

What are the most popular ice cream flavors?

1. Vanilla, 29%
2. Chocolate, 8.9%
3. Butter pecan, 5.3%
4. Strawberry, 5.3%
5. Neapolitan, 4.2%
6. Chocolate chip, 3.9%
7. French vanilla, 3.8%
8. Cookies and cream, 3.6%
9. Vanilla fudge ripple, 2.6%
10. Praline pecan, 1.7%
11. Cherry, 1.6%
12. Chocolate almond, 1.6%
13. Coffee, 1.6%
14. Rocky road, 1.5%
15. Chocolate marshmallow, 1.3%
All others, 23.7%

What's the most popular ice cream topping?
Chocolate syrup

What's the ideal temperature to serve ice cream at?
8 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius)



Statistics and percentages:

Licking the bowl clean after eating ice cream is admitted to by approx 13% of men and 8% of women.

9% of milk produced by dairy farmers in the USA goes into producing ice cream.

Ice cream is an $11 billion-a-year retail industry (world wide).
80% of the world's Vanilla Bean used for ice cream is grown in Madagascar.


Miscellaneous facts:

The biggest ice cream sundae ever made was 12 feet high and made with 4,667 gallons of ice cream and 7,000 pounds of toppings in Anaheim, Calif., during 1985.

One of the major ingredients in ice cream is air. Without it, the stuff would be as hard as a rock!

Among the most unusual flavors of ice cream ever manufactured are avocado, garlic, azuki bean, jalapeno, and pumpkin. Perhaps the weirdest of all: dill pickle ice cream, which was marketed to expectant mothers. Sales were disappointing.

Sources: SendIceCream, DrSpock





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Sunday, August 19, 2007

How to make cookie dough ice cream

In my search for information about ice cream I've found literally hundreds of recipes for both home-made and machine-made ice creams. I'm just amazed at how many different kinds and recipes there are. Anyway, I figured I'd post the recipe for my personal favorite: Cookie Dough flavor.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups milk
  • 1 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla
  • 4 cups heavy cream
  • 1 cup chocolate chip cookie dough
  • 2 cups light cream

Directions:

Scald milk until bubbles form around the edge then remove from heat.
Add the sugar and salt and stir until dissolved.
Next, stir in light cream, vanilla, and the heavy cream then cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

1. If you're using an ice cream machine then follow instructions as normal and wait until it completes the process. You should be left with a chilled soft ice cream.

2. If you're using the home. Ziploc bags method, pour the contents into your smaller bag, place that into the bigger bag and then shake for 3 or 4 minutes. Again you should be left with a softish chilled ice cream.

Add the chocolate chip cookie dough. Just break up the dough as best you can with your hands and drop the bits into the soft ice cream.

Try to mix it around to ensure that the cookie dough is evenly distributed throughout the ice cream.

If using a machine, put the ice cream in the freezer for several hours until hard.
If using the bag method, place it back in the bag and shake for another 1-2 minutes. This will harden it up so it's ready to eat!

While the bag method is quicker, the machine method will wield much creamier, less crystalized ice cream. I haven't tried this recipe yet, but I'll let you know how it goes, I can taste it already!




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Saturday, August 18, 2007

Fried ice cream?!

Wow, check this out. While searching for some of the more obscure things to do with ice cream I came across fried ice cream.. that's right, fried ice cream!

Apparently this rare dish is popular in mexican cuisine as well as Chinese and Japanese resteraunts in the U.S.

It is made by taking a scoop of ice cream which has been frozen at a very low temperature (even for ice cream), rolling in cornflakes or cookie crumbs and then briefly deep frying! The extremely low temperature of the ice cream prevents it from melting while being fried.

There you have it, strange but true! I haven't tried it yet myself but I imagine the extreme hot and cold temperatures would be very weird and it's probably quite hard to get right without melting the ice cream. Interesting none-the-less.





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How to make ice cream - A standard recipe

This is the basic premise of how to make ice cream. This recipe is the basis for a huge number of ice cream recipes online. Not only that but it's a great way to waste a half hour!

Ingredients:

  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • ½ cup milk, cream, or half and half
  • ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract (or other flavoring)
  • 6 tablespoons rock salt (available at any supermarket)*
  • Enough ice to fill the gallon-sized bag halfway
  • 1 gallon-sized Ziploc bag
  • 1 pint-sized Ziploc bag
Directions:

1. Big bag. Take your big bag (1 gallon) and fill it half way with ice and add in the salt. Shake it up a bit so the salt mixes through.

2. Little bag. Find a bowl and pour in the milk or cream or milk-cream mix, and your vanilla extract, mix together then carefully pour this into your small bag (1 pint).

3. Bag 'em n tag 'em. Make sure the small bag is sealed then place it inside the big bag, surrounding it in ice.

4. Shake like mad! Now the fun part, shake the big bag vigorously for five minutes. This is where having kids comes in handy!


Congratulations you've just learned how to make ice cream!

Tips:
Using cans/tins instead of bags makes it easier to shake, finding a big enough tin can be difficult though.
Milk will wield a thinner, lower calorie ice cream whereas thicker creams will produce a rich smoother ice cream.
You can replace vanilla extract with virtually any flavor you like. Honey, chocolate chips, nuts, mint, even peanut butter! Go crazy and invent your own ice cream flavors!

*If you positively cannot find rock salt then table salt will also work. The bigger the salt crystals the better.




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How to make ice cream - Different techniques

How to make ice cream is a pretty daunting subject at first since there are dozens of different ways to do it. I recommend trying them all out at least once and figuring out which is easiest/tastes best for you.

Homemade ice cream
The cheapest method of all is, unfortunately, usually pretty hard to get right (but it's great fun trying and experimenting!) Following recipes, you can make ice cream for as little as the cost of the ingredients, which are all very easy to get.

Make-Your-Own ice cream packets/products
There are thousands to chose from and unfortunately the only way to know if they're any good is to buy 'em n try 'em. Luckily they're pretty cheap and you can buy them in almost any supermarket. These are usually better than making homemade ice cream because they have the right amounts of ingredients already and doing the rest is a matter of reading the back of the packet and sticking it in the freezer.

Ice Cream Maker Machine
There are hundreds of different kinds of ice cream making machines for sale, again with varying results. These range in the price of $30, anything up to $300 and come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them even look cool and are great fun too!





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What is ice cream?

This may seem like a stupid question, but it's actually pretty complicated trying to define ice-cream. At first I figured ice cream was just a mixture of cream or milk, sugar and flavouring that has been frozen. I was wrong! While researching I've found that the science of how to make ice cream is pretty interesting stuff.

What is ice cream?
In terms of specific ingredients, the recipe for ice cream is simple. But in scientific terms, it's complicated stuff. Ice cream is a colloid, a type of emulsion. An emulsion is a combination of two substances that don't normally mix together. Instead, one of the substances is dispersed throughout the other. In ice cream, molecules of fat are suspended in a water-sugar-ice structure along with air bubbles. The presence of air means that ice cream is also technically a foam.

In addition to milk fat, non-fat milk solids, sugar, and air, ice cream also contains stabilizers and emulsifiers. Stabilizers help hold the air bubble structure together and give the ice cream a better texture. Although gelatin was originally used as a stabilizer, xanthan gum, guar gum, and other compounds are used today. Emulsifiers keep the ice cream smooth and aid the distribution of the fat molecules throughout the colloid. Egg yolks were once used, but ice cream manufacturers now tend to use other chemical compounds. These stabilizers and emulsifiers make up a very small proportion (less than one percent) of the ice cream. - Taken from HowStuffWorks.com

According to HowStuffWorks there're specific rules and criteria that define the difference between Ice Cream and Sorbets, Frozen Deserts, etc. In fact, to be classified as ice cream the substance must be at least 10% milk fat, and a minimum of six percent non-fat milk solids. Also a gallon has to weigh at least 4.5 pounds. I suppose this is to stop companies marketing their product as ice cream when it's poor quality.





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