Cookaholics Bulletin Board

For quite awhile I was making a better quality ice cream for myself and friends, at least until my ice cream machine's electric motor gave out (twice). I use an old school White Mountain 6 quart machine to make ice cream. And I have a new one on order, even older school, since it is the manual version. I bought a recipe book on ice cream from a local bookstore and started at it. We use a recipe that includes heavy cream (UHT variety since that is the only kind available here), fresh milk from the local dairy, sugar (or honey), and natural fruit flavors.

Which is where my problem lies. The two most popular flavors are strawberry and mango. Both of these fruits have high moisture contents and that translates to small but off-putting crunch in my ice cream. Not the smooth texture or mouth feel I want. I've tried doing reductions of the fruit puree to control moisture and that has helped, but it alters the taste of the ice cream too. Strawberry reduces best but becomes quite concentrated, mango will reduce also but it loses its fresh mango taste and develops an almost caramel flavor to it when reduced. Not a bad flavor, mind you, but not the Fresh Mango I am after.

I've read some recipes that include gelatin in the ingredient list. I am guessing that the gelatin is to absorb excess water? Anyone have a fix to the icing problem in natural fruit flavored ice cream?

One technique is to macerate your fruit in alcohol, e.g. vodka first before you add it to the ice cream.

Amy

I've never made mango ice cream, but my recipe for Aam Ki Kulfi (Indian ice cream) calls for canned mango pulp. I haven't always had access that particular commodity, so I've also done it with fresh mango pulp. The canned is much less icy, and I've never noticed a caramel note to it.

I think there is just always a bit of iciness to fruit ice cream. Really, the only fruit ice creams I can think of that were perfectly creamy were ones that had a lot of help from emulsifiers and gums.

Thanks, Amy. I've never considered that option. Is there a technique to remove the alcohol prior to incorporating into the custard prior to freezing?

JesBelle, I will have to look up Aam Ki Kulfi, I've never heard of it before. I don't want to say that there is not canned mango pulp here, but I haven't run across it yet. Of course, I wasn't really looking for it either. Mango is very, very prevalent in the Philippines. Almost ubiquitous. Except for seasonality. The caramel taste is due to my reducing it in a Windsor pan to try and remove water from the pulp.

And I hear what you are saying about the use of gums and such. In a separate thread, I ended up looking up a number of ingredients, one of which is used to promote smoothness. And there is even a genteically modified fish protein from some little arctic (or maybe it was antarctic) finny fellow that is used as pseudo natural de-icer in ice cream.

I do not want to use genetically altered fish protein, to be sure. But I really don't want any crunch or the feeling of tiny bits of ice "grit" in my ice cream. I am really after two things: First - Flavor ... Second - Smooth Creaminess (or maybe Creamy Smoothness).

I am going to look at the macerating technique and read more about the use of gelatin in ice cream what purpose it fulfills (other than being a filler, hopefully).

Thanks for the ideas and tips!

I simply drain the fruit prior to adding to my custard base. Works great. One of my favorites is to use peach schnapps with fresh peaches. Yum.

Amy

OMG! YUM!

L

This recipe is by Smita Chandra. I changed the method a bit. She doesn't whip the cream, but I find that it helps stabilize the mixture so that it doesn't become icy. Apparently, in India they use cornstarch for the same effect.

1 14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk
15 ounces canned mango pulp
2 - 3 drops kewra essence (optional)
5 cardamom pods
1 ¼ cups whipping cream
1 tablespoon slivered blanched almonds
1 tablespoon chopped blanched pistachios

1. In a large bowl combine the milk, mango pulp, and kewra essence. Remove the seeds from the cardamom pods, grind the seeds coarsely, and add to the mango mixture.

2. In a separate bowl, whip the cream to soft peaks. Fold 1/3 of the cream into the mango mixture. Add the rest of the cream in two portions, folding each portion into the mixture.

3. Cover the mixture with plastic wrap and freeze for about 8 hours. Garnish with nuts before serving.

Servings: 4

Cornstarch? *Perk*

On a different thread I asked about using cornstarch in making cakes, purportedly it lightens the cake. Now cornstarch is used (in India) to minimize the development of ice crystals? Heading for Google to see if I can find anything about that.

I did find a bit over at David Lebovitz about gelatin being used to keep sorbets softer, which is not my intent, though my wife might actually prefer a softer ice cream.

Okay, Mark Bittman has an egg-less custard using cornstarch and his discussion talks about cornstarch absorbing the water which makes for much smaller ice crystals and thus a very smooth ice cream. So now I will be looking at adding cornstarch to my custards in the future, at least those destined to marry a natural fruit flavor such as mango or strawberry.

Another thing I ran into -somewhere- was that commercial makers often condense their milk to remove water. So I'm thinking about that as well, to limit the overall water content. Anyone have pros or cons about replacing fresh milk (or some portion of it) with evaporated milk?

JesBelle, thanks for posting the recipe. I will add that to my file and give it a try. I really want to get a smaller 1 or 2 quart ice cream maker so that I can play around with various recipes before committing the ingredients and time to the 6 quart machine. You Indian influenced ice cream sounds delish!

I made cornstarch ice cream when I was working with kids due to the eggs. Very yummy and creamy.

Mary

Not ice cream, but this is one of my favorite frozen treats.

Coconut Lime Sorbet

Ingredients:
* 1 (15 ounce) coconut water
* 1/2 cup fresh lime juice
* 3/4 cup simple syrup (50/50 water to sugar)


Directions:

1. Combine the cocunut water, lime juice, and syrup in the container of an ice cream maker. Freeze according to manufacturer's instructions.

This recipe originally called for sweetened cream of coconut, 3/4 cups of water and no additional sweetener. I had a case of coconut water given to me so I used that. Very refreshing and light. It also keeps well in the freezer.