Notes on Ice Cream Making
I love making ice cream! Not only because I get to eat it, but also because the process of making it and developing recipes it is fun and involves a lot of fascinating science.
These are some general tips and tricks on ice cream making that might be helpful when trying my recipesa. A lot of this I learned from the blog Ice Cream Science by Ruben Porto.
Ingredients
There are some ingredients types common to most of my ice cream recipes.
Thickening Agents
Thickening agents serve to, well, thicken the ice cream mixture. This improves texture and melting behavior of the finished ice cream.
There are a bunch of thickening agents in use for ice cream. Currently, I’ve settled on carob bean gum (also known as locust bean gum). I chose that after comparing it against xanthan gum. You can read about the results of that experiment in a blog post.
I adjust the amount to the recipe: for example, my coffee ice cream doesn’t have any viscosity from the other ingredients, so I add a bit more thickeners than I do in other recipes.
Inulin
Inulin is a type of plant fiber. It’s purpose in ice cream is to improve texture and melting behavior. It can replace some fat content in that capacity.
Ice Cream Science has two comprehensive articles about inulin and other fibers in ice cream you should take a look at if you want to learn more:
Sugars
TODO
Vegan Milk Product Alternatives
All my ice cream is vegan, because:
- that way I can serve it to my vegan friends.
- if frees me from having to handle animal products, which require some care when used in something like ice cream, which for obvious reasons isn’t cooked through right before serving.
- it’s an interesting creative challenge. I’m quite proud that for example my chocolate ice cream doesn’t have to hide from any cow-based alternative.
If you’re ideologically opposed to eating vegan food, don’t like the taste or something like that, you’re of course free to replace these ingredients with cow-based ones. Just be wary of food safety.
Milk
Milk alternatives are really easy to find these days. I use oat milk, e.g. by Oatly, but a store brand will do fine. I use a “Barista” variant for the slightly higher fat content (~3.5 %). You can of course experiment with other milk alternatives to your liking.
TODO: compare different kinds of milks in flavor.
Cream
In recipes where the base ingredient doesn’t have enough fat content itself, cream is used to make a more creamy and smooth ice cream.
Finding a plant-based cream alternative fit for ice cream is a bit tricky in my experience – at least here in Germany. You’ll want something with a quite high fat content. A lot of products meant for cooking actually boast their low fat content, which makes sense, but is annoying for our purposes here.
What I ended up with is “Hafer Cuisine zum Aufschlagen” (“Oat Cuisine for Whipping”) by Oatly. It’s really creamy and actually produces a whipped cream that isn’t behind cow cream in texture and tastes great, which is pretty cool. For ice cream we don’t really care about the whipping, but we care for the taste, the creaminess and the high fat content of 23 %.
My recipes are balanced for these 23 %. If whatever cream alternative you end up with has a slightly different fat content, that’s probably fine. If it’s off substantially, you can try playing around with the milk-cream ratio accordingly.
TODO: compare different kinds.
Equipment
Ice cream making requires some specialized equipment.
Ice Cream Maker
You’ll obviously need an ice cream maker.
I use a Ninja Creami NC300 (their first model). After preparing the mixture, it’s frozen for >24 hours in a special pint (the serving size in my recipes is based on these pints). When you want to eat the ice cream, you put the pint in the machine, which pushes a rotating blade through the mixture to break down ice crystals, stir in some air, and make it creamy like, well, ice cream. In essence it’s a fancy drill press.
The advantage of this system is that you can prepare your ice cream when you have the time, and once you want to serve it, the process only takes a minute. Also, the machine is relatively compact.
However, I can’t fully recommend Ninja machines. Let’s just say: don’t put the pints into the dishwasher. Yes, they explicitly say they’re dishwasher-safe. They’re not. They might deform, and using deformed pints can break the machine. Also, their customer service is abysmal. Ask me how I know. Annoyingly, as far as I know, there currently isn’t any other company that manufactures a similar machine.
Alternatively you can use a “classic” ice cream maker. These work by freezing the mixture while stirring it continuously, preventing buildup of ice crystals in the first place. There’s a wide variety of these machines out there. I don’t have experience with these, though, so I can’t really recommend anything.
Measuring
In my recipes, I only use measurements by weight, because in my opinion that’s just the easiest to use precisely and repeatably.
Ice cream making involves some small and precise quantities. For example, a lot of my recipes involve half a gram of some thickener in an entire pint of ice cream mixture. To be able to reliably measure quantities like that, I recommend a scale that can weigh at least to a precision of 0.1 grams, and one that can do 0.01 grams can’t hurt.
If you’re in the US, and only have scales measuring in freedoms per barrel, sorry – you’ll have to convert the units manually, or get a scale capable of measuring grams.
Recipe Development
Ice cream recipe development involves balancing a few variables such as freezing point, fat content and sugar content to keep them in an optimal range. This is important to achieve a good flavor, texture and mouthfeel.
I use EisApp24 for that. It’s a web app that consists mostly of a spreadsheet with an ingredient database for calculating the aforementioned variables and includes some other helpful tools. It has a subscription cost attached and is only available in German, though.