ice cream maker as their deal of the day for $139. This model of ice cream maker has a compressor built in, so no more freezer bowls taking up limited space in the freezer and no more planning 24 hours ahead when I want to make a batch of ice cream. I had wanted this type of machine for a long time, but the normal price of $250 was a bit more than I was willing to pay for something I really didn't need. At $139 I was able to rationalize the purchase though, and so far I have been very happy with the purchase! I love Woot.com!The shipping notice from sellout.woot.com had been filtered out by my mail server's spam filter, so when it arrived on Friday the 2nd I was completely unprepared. Earlier in the day I had walked to the Taste of Chicago, spent some time watching cooking demos and exploring the festival and then walked back home. All in all about 12-15 miles of walking which did a number on my legs and feet. While I would have liked to get started immediately making ice cream, I waited until the next day to go out and pick up some ingredients. I stopped by Costco and picked up some heavy cream. It's really cheap there, I believe it was $5.69 for a half gallon. When I got home I went about making the base for my first batch. I went with a basic french vanilla ice cream, the recipe is based on one from Cook's Illustrated, but I had to make a few modifications due to the ingredients I had on hand. The final recipe was...
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup skim milk
3/4 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1 vanilla bean
1/8 tsp salt
To make the custard, combine the dairy, 1/4 cup of the sugar, salt and the vanilla bean which has been split and scraped. Put over heat and bring to a simmer. Meanwhile, whist the remaining 1/2 cup sugar with the 4 egg yolks until they become light and fluffy. Temper the hot cream in to the eggs by slowly pouring it in while whisking, then add back to the pot and return to the heat. stir constantly until the custard thickens at about 185 degrees. Cool the custard rapidly by straining it in to a bowl set over another bowl of ice and stirring until cold. Cover directly with plastic wrap and let sit in the refrigerator for at least four hours before churning.
Setting up the machine was pretty easy and straightforward. The base is poured in to the freezing bucket which is then lowered in to the unit. It's a pretty snug fit but not difficult to get in place. I assembled the paddle, lid and churning motor in one piece and lowered in to place. The churning motor is a separate electric motor that plugs in to a socket on the top. Then, all you have to do is plug in the ice cream maker and set the timer. One thing I noticed is that the churning motor is pretty loud! The instructions say it will take about 40 minutes to finish a batch, but in this case the motor stopped after about 30 minutes. The soft ice cream was packed in to gladware containers and placed in the freezer to harden. It was VERY good, strong vanilla flavor but not overpowering.
The following weekend I decided to make strawberry ice cream. This time I decided to make a Philadelphia style ice cream instead of a french style. While french style is an egg based custard, Philadelphia style contains no eggs and does not need to be cooked. The recipe I used is pretty simple and produced another VERY good final product.
1 pound fresh strawberries, hulled and chopped
3/4 cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt
2 cups cream
1/2 oz brandy
dash of vanilla extract
After the strawberries were chopped they were macerated in the 3/4 cup sugar and salt for several hours until they had given up a lot of juice. I then used an immersion blender to puree most of the berries, while leaving a few chunks intact. The cream was added along with the brandy and dash of vanilla.
Pureeing the berries gave the ice cream base a very attractive pink color without having to resort to artificial coloring. The finished product has a really good strawberry flavor, but isn't too sweet. I'm going to have a LOT of fun using this over the summer! At some point I'm going to look in to creating a low fat/low sugar ice cream that will be a nice non-guilty pleasure. I experimented a bit in culinary school with a base made of milk thickened with corn starch so I'll probably start there, but that was using a professional batch freezer which is a little more advanced than what I have here but I'm certain that it's possible!
No comments:
Post a Comment