I love making ice cream at home, but this series really leveled me up: underbelly-nyc.blogspot.com/2016/05/ice-cr
Three ideas:
1. Dextrose + invert sugar to lower sweetness
2. Milk solids to depress the freezing point and lower water %
3. Replace most eggs w/ gums to stabilize w/ cleaner flavor
Conversation
I made two batches in the last two weeks following these ideas, and they're both a huge leap better than any ice cream I've made before!
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Do you feel like the ice cream you make is better than what you can buy? What I hear from is that you don’t get better ice cream, just more control over the precise flavor (which seems like it could mean better depending on your tastes?)
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It's much better than what I can buy from an ice cream shop, but not as good as ice cream from serious pastry lines at high-end restaurants. Relative to typical ice cream, mine's:
- way less sweet
- higher fat
- better flavorings: I'll use $$ ingredients; a $10 retail pint can't
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One funny reason why homemade can easily be much better than ice cream shops' is that in many states (like CA), if you mass-produce ice cream, you must start from a base made w/ an inspected pasteurization facility. So they all use the same bases from e.g. Strauss and doctor it.
Replying to
Oh that’s sad. Not sure if you were implying this, but do you use raw milk/cream for yours?
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No, but because I'm making my own base I can adjust fat, egg, and sugar content appropriately for each flavor, and I can use the heating process to infuse ingredients like coffee. Premade bases are hard to infuse well (can't reheat too hot), and they have fixed component ratios.
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