Let’s take a look at Rum Raisin, an old favorite. I’ve chosen this topic for 3 reasons: Nostalgia: this was one of my favorites when I was a little kid. It’s supposed to be a grownup flavor but I just loved it. Other people have told me they had the same experience. Even people who as adults don’t like rum. …
Over the years I’ve had a few requests for soft serve help. Not from Mr. Softee competitors* or would-be usurpers of the throne of the Dairy Queen, but, maybe surprisingly, from chefs. They felt that something nostalgic (and maybe a bit kitschy) would work with their restaurant concept, but they wanted to keep their standards, stay in control, and …
Introduction Vegan ice cream is everywhere these days, and it’s not just herbivores who demand them. Some pleasure-seekers are trying to reduce their impact on the planet. Others are bothered by the treatment of dairy cows at industrial farms. Others are lactose-intolerant. Others are just jumping on a bandwagon. A marketing executive at a national brand told me that interview …
Early drafts of the fruit theory posts have been slow going—and people have been bugging me for something they can use. So here’s a sample sorbet recipe, developed with strawberries, but which also works well with peaches (they have similar solids and sugars levels). This will be the best sorbet you’ve ever had, if you use good fruit. I’m quite …
Farmland in Banga, Burundi. Photo by Christine Vaufrey. From dailycoffeenews.com The coffee ice cream method described in the previous post has been so successful at preserving the origin character of coffee that it’s turned into a minor fetish. I can’t stop making batches with different coffees, and eating them, which is getting me into some trouble with my girlfriend, …
[Edited 9-17-2020 to adjust ice cream cooking time/temperature] Welcome to the first post that focusses on a single flavor. We’re starting with coffee, not because it’s simple—it’s maybe the most complex flavor we’ll have the pleasure of disecting. We’re going to take on this complexity because coffee flavor illustrates so many principles, and because there’s a mountain of high …
The holidays are upon us—good cheer, warm cockles, and dining while captive audience to your white supremacist uncle. I’m not promising boozy ice cream will take the edge off. But it can’t hurt. Spirit flavors are well trodden territory. If you can find it in a bottle, or make it in a still out back, someone’s probably made ice …
Electron micrograph of a milk fat globule. Here’s where the action is. [Updated 2-1-2023] This has so far been the most challenging post to research and write; there’s a lot of arcane and incomplete knowledge on the topic, much of it of questionable relevance to the mission of artisanal ice cream making. If you favor recipes …
Locust bean pods Shunned and embraced, demonized and defended, shouted and mispronounced, these ingredients are the most widely missunderstood, proving equally befuddling to ice cream lovers on all sides of the never-ending, stupid lively arguments. I’m hoping to shed some light here. [significant updates 2-1-2023] What Are They? Stabilizers are any ingredients used to thicken the water …
[This article was substantially revised in February 2023, April 2019, and June 2019. Thanks to experience and advances in our software analytics, we’ve updated our approaches to sugars since this first went live in 2016.] Sugars: they’re sweet, and they keep the ice cream soft. If you’ve had homemade ice cream with the consistency of concrete, …
