summer ice cream lab #1

I have an ice cream machine; summer is the peak season for ice cream – these are two known facts. I bought the machine in the summer of 2011, fully knowing that it would spend the summer in storage, while I camped out in a sublet before moving to our current home. Upon moving, the machine migrated into a place of prominence on one of the few exposed shelves in our kitchen, languishing there until i recently decided that I did not know enough about making ice cream. I mean, sure, I had made a few batches of ice cream, and the bowl has a permanent spot in our freezer. But basically, I didn’t have enough experience with the machine to have the confidence to throw something together when I wanted some ice cream (well, when I knew I’d want ice cream in a couple of days).

Naturally, when you realize you are lacking in knowledge, you go about educating yourself. The problem with food is that education produces large amounts of foodstuffs; the problem with education is that we naturally want to cram it into the shortest amount of time possible. The solution, of course, is to find a group of people willing to consume your experiments – namely, your friends. A real friend will always assent to being your taste tester. Well, within reason.

Recipes about ice cream abound, with different methods for infusing flavor, adding texture, making sorbets versus ice creams. That basic understanding of the mechanics of ice cream is important. But learning about ice cream is more than learning how to make ice cream – it includes learning how we eat ice cream. Perhaps most commonly, we eat it plain; sometimes we add sprinkles, hot fudge, caramel. But we love ice cream so much that we also eat it on things – a la mode – and in things – ice cream cake, profiteroles, etc. I have been known, in the past, to let ice cream soften slightly, and moosh it together with cake, forming a sort of cold summer cake pudding. It tastes better than it sounds.  Accordingly, I structured my summer ice cream series  in four themes: flavor, texture, temperature, and enclosure.

One of the first things you learn about ice cream is that it’s very easy to make – it just takes time. Making the base is the easy part – then you have to wait for it to get cold enough to churn. After you churn it, you have to wait for it to get firm enough to eat. Then, if you’ve let it freeze overnight, you then have to wait for it to get soft enough to eat. This is all well and good if you’re only making one batch of ice cream; but if you want to make a decent variety of flavors to taste test, then you end up making two batches of ice cream, four to five days a week. Having two bowls for your machine helps, but reduces the amount of storage space in your freezer for the ice cream.
First up was flavor – I was interested in different ways of infusing ice cream with flavor. Some ice creams are made with fruit; how does that change when you roast the fruit to concentrate the flavor? Some ice creams are made by infusing the cream – what are some of the different things that we use for the infusion? Following these basic questions, the lineup for the first week was:

– Roasted cherry ice cream (5/10)
– Plum sorbet (7/10)
– Roasted strawberry coconut milk ice cream (8/10)
– Cinnamon toast ice cream (8/10)
– Buttered popcorn ice cream (9/10)
– Vietnamese coffee ice cream (6/10)
– Spiced apple sorbet (9/10)

I was originally going to make an oatmeal ice cream, in which the oatmeal has been toasted, then infused with the cream. I have every intention of following through on an oatmeal ice cream at a later date – while reading the actual recipe, I noticed that it called for the equivalent of 15 egg yolks. Most ice cream recipes have 4-6 egg yolks per quart yield of ice cream, and they’re plenty rich, so 15 egg yolks is basically asking for a heart attack. (This was adapted from a restaurant recipe by its original recipe writer, which makes me reluctant to consider what might be lurking in the ice cream when I order the house-made ice cream at fancy restaurants.)

The most popular of the bunch were the roasted strawberry ice cream, the buttered popcorn, and the spiced apple sorbet. I think the roasted cherry suffered a bit from the old expectations problem – roasted fruit tastes different than the way we expect fruit to taste in ice cream. This was less of a problem with the roasted strawberry ice cream, because the flavor of the strawberries was more delicate, so less changed from the fresh fruit; it was also better balanced by the coconut milk base than the cherry ice cream was with its plain milk-and-cream base. The cinnamon toast ice cream was among my favorites, although I learned that it is possible to over-infuse the cream with spices (in this case, cinnamon sticks). That one is probably best when very fresh, otherwise the ice cream will slowly soak into the crunch toast bits.

The most unexpected of this batch was the buttered popcorn ice cream, which involves infusing the cream with freshly popped popcorn. I don’t know if the recipe testers had this problem, but freshly popped popcorn is….well, it very happily absorbs liquid. In fact, it sucked up all of the liquid originally allotted in the recipe; I ended up both adding a lot more liquid, then pressing the whole mixture through a sieve to get the popcorn kernel skins out. A lot of the popcorn starch ended up in the ice cream, giving it more chew and heft than a typical ice cream, which melts more readily.

I’d also note that the strawberry coconut milk ice cream makes a little less than a quart of ice cream, and that the coconut milk base could be used with any roasted fruit or fruit puree.  I’ve done it a few times with roasted strawberries, and once with peach puree, and it has always been well-received.  If your fruit is particularly flavorful, your guests may not even notice the coconut.  The condensed milk base in the coffee ice cream, by the way, gave it a particularly melting and soft texture (in a good way).