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My GF got me an ice cream maker for Christmas, and until recently I haven't really gotten into it (I'm only on my 5th pint now). However, I am now really getting into it (the last 2 pints were in the last month), and I thought I would share what I have learned, and ask for some knowledge, insight, and ideas from the CS crowd.
What I have made (aka, thansal brags a bit):
1) Candied bacon Ice cream
It's great.
It's amazing.
It's a lot of work.
First I will say this: If you haven't made candied bacon, do so. Like today. It's glorious and wonderful, and if you have silpats, not that hard to make. You really don't need the excuse of having it in ice cream, just make it and munch down.
As for the ice cream:
I'm not a fan of egg custards to start with (they tend to always taste to eggy to me), and now I have learned the 'joy' of tempering eggs (it's annoying to say the least). The end result was well worth it however. The ice cream has plenty of strong flavors to counter the egg, the consistency is great, and oh, yah, it's got candied bacon.
I learned that egg custards make great ice creams, however I don't want to make another, unless I make bacon ice cream again... (which I will)
2) Ginger Ice Cream.
It was simple to make, and tasted fabulous. No eggs to temper (or to make it taste eggy). I get to work with my favorite flavor. I get to ignore the recipe and use a lot more ginger than was called for. The consistency was fine, and it was delicious.
I didn't strain out the grated ginger (I like ginger, a lot), and that was a mistake. Chunks of ginger is good, random fibrous stuff? Not so good.
The next time I do this I will strain the ginger out add in a bit of chopped up candied ginger.
My mum did a run of it where she simply tossed all of the ginger into her food processor and strained the pulp directly into the dairy (advantage there is no steeping time and you don't have to peel the ginger :P)
3) A chocolate peanut butter one that used half and half for the entire thing.
It sucked.
It was hard, the flavors didn't meld well, I attempted to get stripes of peanutbutter in there, and that didn't work, etc etc.
4 and 5) Coffee and then Mocha
I simply lifted the recipe for the ginger and replaced with 2 tbs of instant and then 2 tbs of instant and 3/4 cup of cocoa powder.
They are excellent.
I can taste the base as I flavor it and I thus know almost exactly what it will end up like.
The textures are perfect, and remain so even over night in the freezer.
And again, dead simple.
As I said, when mixing them up, I just added in the flavors a bit at a time until I was happy. It really takes almost no time to make the base (just a while for it to cool), and the only effort comes from whisking the cocoa powder in like a mad man. Oh, and the fact that the proportions are simply 2 c, 1 c, 1 c is awesome.
My next attempt is going to be black tea ice cream.
My GF has grumbled about all this coffee stuff (she doesn't touch it), and said I should make her tea ice cream, immediately mentioning green tea (which would be easy using matcha, however I hate the stuff). My plan is to simply steep a bunch of her tea bags in the base mixture until the flavor is a decent one, and have at it, I'm actually fairly hopeful.
So, no that I'm really getting into this, I was hoping that some people could share some recipes, make suggestions for flavoring agents (I want to come up with a fruit one, I'm thinking orange, ala orange cream), and share any general knowledge of ice cream making, as I'm still mostly just bumbling in the dark.
Thanks all
What I have made (aka, thansal brags a bit):
1) Candied bacon Ice cream
It's great.
It's amazing.
It's a lot of work.
First I will say this: If you haven't made candied bacon, do so. Like today. It's glorious and wonderful, and if you have silpats, not that hard to make. You really don't need the excuse of having it in ice cream, just make it and munch down.
As for the ice cream:
I'm not a fan of egg custards to start with (they tend to always taste to eggy to me), and now I have learned the 'joy' of tempering eggs (it's annoying to say the least). The end result was well worth it however. The ice cream has plenty of strong flavors to counter the egg, the consistency is great, and oh, yah, it's got candied bacon.
I learned that egg custards make great ice creams, however I don't want to make another, unless I make bacon ice cream again... (which I will)
2) Ginger Ice Cream.
It was simple to make, and tasted fabulous. No eggs to temper (or to make it taste eggy). I get to work with my favorite flavor. I get to ignore the recipe and use a lot more ginger than was called for. The consistency was fine, and it was delicious.
I didn't strain out the grated ginger (I like ginger, a lot), and that was a mistake. Chunks of ginger is good, random fibrous stuff? Not so good.
The next time I do this I will strain the ginger out add in a bit of chopped up candied ginger.
My mum did a run of it where she simply tossed all of the ginger into her food processor and strained the pulp directly into the dairy (advantage there is no steeping time and you don't have to peel the ginger :P)
3) A chocolate peanut butter one that used half and half for the entire thing.
It sucked.
It was hard, the flavors didn't meld well, I attempted to get stripes of peanutbutter in there, and that didn't work, etc etc.
4 and 5) Coffee and then Mocha
I simply lifted the recipe for the ginger and replaced with 2 tbs of instant and then 2 tbs of instant and 3/4 cup of cocoa powder.
They are excellent.
I can taste the base as I flavor it and I thus know almost exactly what it will end up like.
The textures are perfect, and remain so even over night in the freezer.
And again, dead simple.
As I said, when mixing them up, I just added in the flavors a bit at a time until I was happy. It really takes almost no time to make the base (just a while for it to cool), and the only effort comes from whisking the cocoa powder in like a mad man. Oh, and the fact that the proportions are simply 2 c, 1 c, 1 c is awesome.
My next attempt is going to be black tea ice cream.
My GF has grumbled about all this coffee stuff (she doesn't touch it), and said I should make her tea ice cream, immediately mentioning green tea (which would be easy using matcha, however I hate the stuff). My plan is to simply steep a bunch of her tea bags in the base mixture until the flavor is a decent one, and have at it, I'm actually fairly hopeful.
So, no that I'm really getting into this, I was hoping that some people could share some recipes, make suggestions for flavoring agents (I want to come up with a fruit one, I'm thinking orange, ala orange cream), and share any general knowledge of ice cream making, as I'm still mostly just bumbling in the dark.
Thanks all
I AM the evil bastard!
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