The Ingredient That Will Change Your Homemade Ice Cream Forever - Tasting Table (2024)

FAQs

The Ingredient That Will Change Your Homemade Ice Cream Forever - Tasting Table? ›

Cream cheese

"You can also try diced pineapple tossed in li hing mui powder, which will add sweet, salty, and sour flavors to a simple bowl of vanilla ice cream." In addition to dried fruits, try tossing in chopped nuts, crushed cookies, bite-sized candies, or even bacon bits.

The cream cheese helps create an ice cream with a denser, smoother texture. As explained by TASTE, cream cheese acts as a stabilizer in ice cream, preventing water from seeping out of the milk and cream as well as preventing the formation of ice crystals that detract from ice cream's creaminess.

Sugar, corn syrup or honey, as well as gelatin and commercial stabilizers, can all keep your ice cream at a softer consistency. Ice cream also stays softer when you store it in a shallow container, rather than a deep tub, and cover the surface of the ice cream with plastic wrap to keep ice crystals from forming.

In addition to being an emulsifier, egg yolks serve a second purpose: they thicken pre-churned ice cream base, which creates a creamier mouthfeel in the final product.

Powder things: Cinnamon or garlic powder or stuff like that, you can just mix in with the cream-milk-sugar mixture. Zestables: Citrus fruits live in this category. You can either slice off the rind, twist it to release some of the oil and steep it (like whole things) or zest it into tiny bits and treat it like powder.

A big reason why ice cream tastes so good is because of its high fat content. Unless it is labeled as light, low-fat or non-fat, ice cream must contain at least 10% fat, and this fat must come from milk.

To get rich ice cream, you need enough fat, enough milk protein, and enough sugar to keep the water in the ice cream from freezing solid.

Of course, the main ingredients in ice cream come from milk–and the most important part of that is milkfat, which gives ice cream its smoothness and creamy texture. In fact, in order to be called ice cream, the USDA requires it to contain at least 10 percent milkfat, which can come from milk or cream.

What thickens homemade ice cream? ›

Egg Yolks: The most traditional thickening agent, egg yolks contain natural proteins and fats that contribute to a rich and luxurious texture in custard-based ice creams. Cornstarch: Often used in non-custard ice creams, cornstarch mixed with milk helps thicken the base and create a smooth mouthfeel.

By binding with liquids, sugar molecules prevent an ice cream base from fully freezing into crunchy ice. That is, the more sugar you add, the softer and less icy your batch will be. The kind of sugar you add also matters.

Eggs are used in ice cream to add a rich flavor and color, in- hibit ice crystallization, and also to help stabilize or emulsify the fat and liquid so the resulting product is smooth and creamy. Commercial manufacturers use pasteurized eggs, stabilizers, and other ingredients to produce a safe and acceptable product.

So you can up the fat in your ice cream by substituting cream for milk or half-and-half in recipes. Even more effective, is that you can also add more egg yolks if making a custard-based ice cream, which will increase the creaminess due to their emulsifying properties.

The most common ones used in ice creams are guar gum, cellulose gum and carob bean gum. They are used to reduce ice crystal growth, deliver flavour cleanly, increase smoothness, body and creaminess and slow down melting. They also help hold the air bubble structure together and give the ice cream a better texture.

The general rule is 2 tablespoons of flavouring to 1 litre of ice cream. For example, 1 tablespoon of cinnamon and 1 tablespoon of cardamom to 1 litre of vanilla ice cream. Each recipe will be different though, so be sure to taste as you go along! As we always say, you can always add flavour, but you can't take away!

Whole milk – I don't recommend replacing it with reduced fat or skim. Whole milk's higher fat content ensures that the homemade ice cream comes out creamy, not icy. Cane sugar – For sweetness.

If your ice cream tastes greasy and leaves an unpleasantly cloying film in your mouth, then the butterfat content is probably too high. Try using less cream and more milk. And check the butterfat content using my ice cream calculator.

Luckily, you can turn any ice cream into soft serve with just one trick: Mix more air into it. While the cones you find at places like McDonald's aren't actually ice cream at all, real soft serve is made with all the same ingredients as its more traditional relative.