Newbie needs wisdom. How do you not make wimpy, crystalline, goopy gummy, nor overly hard ice cream. How do you add fruit without that getting icy. What are the secrets. What are the classic failings that I might be spared. Where’s the question mark key?
I want four star restaurant icecream. I want Claudia Fleming ice cream, black pepper in particular. I want the diabetes to be worth it.
Got the kitchen aid attachment yesterday – could be my first critical mistake for all I know.
Here is the base vanilla ice cream recipe I have been using which was given to me by a former BBer Mark Cargasacchi in a thread a year or so ago. I tweaked it a bit, using less eggs and a touch more sugar and playing with the proportions of H&H and cream. This makes around two quarts.
5 egg yolks
1 1/3 cup sugar
2 cups half & half
3 cups heavy cream
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 Whole Vanilla Beans
Whisk eggs, sugar and H&H in a double boiler until it thickens a bit. Pull off the heat and add the butter mixing until it is completely melted. Allow the mixture to cool almost to room temp then mix in the cream and vanilla.
I think the whole vanilla beans make a big difference. For $12 at my local costco I can get two packages with about 6 beans in them. I am still playing with fruit in my ice cream. Last week I did a batch with 1 cup quartered cherries and 6 ounces of 65% Ghirardelli chocolate chunks. I cooked the cherries down a bit with a touch of sugar, allowed them to cool then added them to the base 2 minutes before the churn cycle was over. IMO, cooking the fruit down a bit will help with the icy texture that is sometimes associated with fruit in homemade ice cream.
Tyler’s recipe is not far off of mine. It varies a little bit, but I do the same basic thing for all of my fruit ice creams, Adapted from Chez Panisse Desserts.
1 pint of heavy cream
1 cup of sugar
4 or five yolks, depending on size (though I always seem inclined to add another).
One pound, or thereabouts, fruit.
Some of the sugar will go toward macerating the fruit - deduct that from your cup.
(Whatever else I describe below, you are going to be continuously stirring the pot on the stove.)
Dissolve the rest of the sugar into the cream over moderate heat. When you get the slightest hint of steam, add a couple of tablespoons of the cream to the yolks and stir pretty quickly. You want to warm up the yolks so you don’t cook them when you pour them in the cream. Pour in the stirred yolks and keep stirring everything. As the steam starts to get a bit more visible, I ease the heat down to low. You want to reduce this mixture down until it thickens a little - sticks to the side of the pot or the spoon - without cooking it. But if you overcook, it will break - you’ll end up with custard and what looks like water and your ice cream will get grainy. If it seems like I am over-describing, keep in mind that this is only about a ten minute process. So as it moves toward irrevocably steaming, pull the pot off the stove and keep stirring. If the steam seems to be increasing, maybe set the pot in the cold sink while you keep stirring until the steam eases up. Strain the base into a bowl and put in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.
Then just freeze it in your ice cream maker (I’m perfectly happy with my Cuisinart ice cream maker). Dump in your base, your fruit, and some vanilla. I use good extract, because I like how it works better in ice cream - but that’s just personal preference.
The thing I like about this recipe - which is my favorite I’ve ever made and why I stick with it… the texture is great. Very smooth. And it is fluffy ice cream. I’ve used milk in ice cream, too - and milk seems to help prevent your base from breaking when it cooks. But I like very custardy, eggy, rich ice cream, while at the same time getting that easily scoopable, airy weight.
I’ve made strawberry three times this year - I’d been picking strawberries at my CSA, rinsing, hulling, quartering, and mashing with the sugar. I’m making peach today - added maybe a teaspoon of some lemon rind. Peaches really need to be smashed, because any piece of solid fruit will turn into a peachy chunk of ice.
As I mentioned, I swear by Chez Panisse Desserts. I have a friend who is a chocolate maker, who swears by The Perfect Scoop. It’s funny, because the guy who wrote that spent time working at Chez Panisse, but he seems to dislike using eggs in his ice cream - so I have used that book less for recipes and more for ideas.
And I just finished my first batch of peach, which seemed to come out great. Loved what the lemon rind did for aroma. Will be curious, after it has been in the freezer*, if the bits are at all bothersome (I doubt it) - but the smell is heavenly.
Also, I highly recommend these tubs for homemade ice cream. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001R1ZVWI
To address one specific question, I think a good rule of thumb would be “if you can recognize the fruit, it’s going to be like ice.” You want to almost have a fruit puree - which I think makes for a more uniform, restaurant-like, ice cream. I avoid cooking the fruit first, when I can - so to keep the “fresh” flavor - though recipes for cherry ice cream will call for you to cook.
I think the “secret” is the eggs. And lowering the water content with the low simmer. To me, this is restaurant quality, no question.
I prefer the non-custard style base:
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup sugar (I use vanilla bean infused evaporated cane juice)
1 TBS vanilla extract
Mix everything until the sugar dissolves and allow to rest in the ice box for a couple of hours. Use you device of choice and get creative. Recently I got some salted caramels from Costco to put in the above base. I froze them and chopped them into small chunks and added to the ice cream right when it began to set.
That’s a version of the recipe I use too. I cut the sugar to about 1/2 cup if not slightly less however, and add a teaspoon of Grand Marnier to make up the difference. This keeps the texture of the ice cream smooth without making it as sweet.
This weeks two batches… blueberry ice cream, with blueberries I picked on Friday, and sour cherry ice cream. I bought the sour cherries from a berry farmer at the local market - a local chef came and bought 17 pints, so I took the only one he left! I’m kicking myself for not buying the black currants they had, because that could have been nice, too.
I steeped half of a cinnamon stick in the base for the blueberry as I made it, added a squirt of lime juice to the blueberries (which I pureed cold, with confectioners sugar, and put through a fine mesh sieve), and will toss in a bit of lime zest when I freeze it.
I barely cooked the sour cherries with a little bit of sugar - just enough to soften a little - pureed, and put through the sieve - the remaining bits were like the greatest cherry pie filling ever. I’ll finely chop some fresh sour cherries that I will toss in as I freeze it.
Hi Brian,
The guys above have all alluded to it already but there’s really only two very essential steps to do what you want with homemade ice cream:
Use top notch quality ingredients in whichever ice cream recipe you choose to use. Skimp on the ingredients, and your final ice cream will end up reaping what you have sown.
USE AN ICE CREAM MAKING MACHINE. There is no getting around this. The key to making ice cream vs creamy ice blocks (nothing wrong with that, though we usually call those cream pops when frozen and molded properly) is to break up the ice crystals into minute particles. The constant churning from a machine breaks up the forming ice crystals and gives you the proper texture and consistency. I use a De Longhi with a built-in compressor but I have also used the old Donvier, Phillips and Cuisinart makers where you had to chill the chamber in the freezer solid and they work just as fine.
The only other option is to take yourself and a metal bowl of your ice cream base into a walk-in freezer, close the door, and keep stirring constantly until the ice cream freezes into the proper consistency. Please wear a thick parka and be aware that there is a very high risk of hypothermia due to the workout from constant stirring and the freezing environment you are in. 
Some other tips that may be useful:
RESCUING ICE CREAM BASES MADE WITH EGG: Though ideally you don’t want to have to do this to begin with, there is a way of saving an egg-based ice cream base (and custard and pudding, for that matter): if it curdles on you from overcooking, immediately take everything off of the stove and pour into a blender. Blend and high speed holding the lid down, otherwise the heat and steam will cause the blender lid to literally blow off. Once settled, slowly remove the lid which will allow some air to now come into mixture. it will all emulsify itself back into a smooth base.
ALWAYS MACERATE/COOK FRUIT WITH YOUR SWEETENER FIRST: You can see this was done with many of the recipes the guys gave you above. Either just let your fresh fruit and sugar sit in a bowl for a while or if cooking your fruit base, do so with some or all of the sugar in the recipe. The reason you should do this that the sweetener will draw out the flavorful juices from the fruit which will then mix into the liquid ice cream. If you just throw in fresh fruit into your base and freeze immediately, the fruit will not have enough time to lend its flavors to the cream base and will be very muted in comparison.
If time is short, then the other alternative you can do is throw your fruit with the sugar into the blender blend away, adding the other liquid ingredients after. This is in fact what I always do for a Philadelphia style (i.e. no eggs used) ice cream.
Hope this helps. Good luck and do let us know what frozen treats you end up making. Homemade ice cream rules! 
GREAT notes, Tran - thanks! I will remember your “saving the base” trick - it is a precise thing though, after a while, one just gets a knack for it.
Had the finished Blueberry last night. It was funny in that it was a crowd-pleaser, even though it wasn’t one of my favorites. To do it again, I would leave out the cinnamon and only use lime zest.
The Sour Cherry is freezing now, and it is going to be about the best ever. I added a healthy dose of vanilla and a tiny bit of kirsch as it froze.
My new tip of the day…
While it is freezing, use a spoon and stick it in the freezer to rub the frozen ice cream off of the side. Don’t let go or you’ll break the plastic wands that stir it all as it freezes. But if you scrape away the most frozen stuff, it will (all) freeze it all more evenly.
Chris,
All this peach talk lately and had me drooling! I did a batch of peach over the weekend and used a bit of lemon zest; loved it! I used my base recipe above and 3 softball sized peaches. I was forced to use kirkland brand vanilla extract as costco seemed to be out of the fresh beans.
Now trying to decide what to do next.
Excellent! I just finished my peach last night - I’ll make my next batch when the local peaches start to run.
Probably make more blueberry over the weekend. But really hoping those black currants are at the market again.
one name - david lebovitz
here’s a good start:
Be sure to save ‘a couple spoonfuls’ for Jorge
This may sound off the reservation a bit, but I like to use 2 extra ingredients for my ice cream. I learned this from a chick I met in NYC. She’s got a bunch of places in Ohio now. Anyway, the first is cornstarch, from 1-2 tablespoons. You make a slurry with 1/4 cup of your cold milk, then whisk it into your cooked milk off the heat. Put everything back on the heat whisking until thickened, 1-2 minutes. The other ingredient is cream-cheese, from 2-6 ounces. I blitz this until it’s nice and smooth, then pour in the cooked milk, whisking the bageebies out of it all until it’s thoroughly mixed. You can do everything else like it is in any other recipe you use.
Depends on the size of the spoon, and any cherry on top?
I have that and use it for ideas, not recipes. Although he has some custard-based recipes (and this may just be a matter of taste), most of his do not contain yolks. And while his strawberry & sour cream recipe is okay, making strawberry with a basic custard is way better. It’s funny, because (as I mentioned in an earlier post) he worked at Chez Panisse and they have more custard recipes in Chez Panisse Desserts.
I’ve got a copy of Jeni’s ice cream book coming - a friend worked on it and swears by it. Francis - is this who you meant? She is Ohio-based and I saw that she used cornstarch in recipes that were in F+W.
Yep. I think she was “Entrepreneur Of The Year” in 2010. Her ice-creams are rather well known, and I’m pretty well certain that they’re really good. Funny enough though, I haven’t had any.
Google is an amazing tool!
http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/how-to-make-ice-cream-like-an-artisan
I’m going to make ice cream very soon, and will probably give this a shot.
Cool. I hadn’t seen that article. I wasn’t aware that she’s not big on the egg-yolk idea. I prefer creamy custard varieties with the yolks included. Something else that she does that I don’t follow is that she strains and presses out whatever the main flavoring ingredients before putting everything into the freezer machine. I kinda like that stuff in the ice-cream.
“Strain the ice cream base into an ice cream maker, pressing the pistachios with the back of a spoon to extract all the flavor, and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Pack the ice cream into a plastic container.”
"Strain the ice cream base into an ice cream maker, pressing the mint leaves with the back of a spoon to extract all of the flavor, and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Pack the ice cream into a plastic container.
Anyway, she is a pretty good model for great ice-cream ideas.
I make a fair amount of gelato. I use this:
[Note: It was recommended by Scott Manlin on this board from a list of machines I was looking at. It works well.]
The above notes are important. Make sure the base is cold before freezing. I like to chill the base at least overnight. Straining the base is also important.
Buona Fortuna.
Good luck.