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WHAT'S NEW
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Make your own ice cream
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Master homemade ice cream and indulge in a flavourful, preservative-free treat at your whim.
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By Dee Van Dyk
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Flavourings - The sky is the limit when choosing flavourings to add to ice cream, but some choices might alter the texture and taste of the finished product.
Some fruit contains a high percentage of water and natural sugar, which can dilute the ice cream. You can counter this by increasing the cream content (over milk), which acts by increasing the fat globules in the ice cream. Fruits like raspberries have a low sugar content and you might wish to add more sugar to compensate; high-sugar fruits like bananas may not require as much sugar to be added. Use fresh and in-season fruits whenever you can for more intensely flavoured ice cream.
Flavours aren't as intense when frozen so use concentrated flavours. For example, if you want to add orange taste to ice cream use concentrated orange rather than the diluted orange juice.
When adding chunky items -- like chocolate or candies -- to ice cream, add them towards the end of the freezing process to avoid finding all the chunks at the bottom of the ice cream.
"And use good pure cocoa when making chocolate ice cream," recommends Van Ham. "Don't use a hot chocolate drink mix."
Serving tips
-Homemade ice cream tastes best right after it comes out of the ice cream machine, but it scoops better after it's been in the freezer for about four hours.
-Soften the ice cream in the fridge or on the counter for a few minutes before scooping.
-Dip the ice cream scoop in cold water before scooping to get a neater scoop.
Storage tips
-Store ice cream at between -5 and 0F.
-Tightly cover ice cream during storage to avoid the ice cream absorbing flavours from other foods. It's a good idea to cover the ice cream with wax paper or parchment before you put the lid on it -- this helps reduce the formation of ice crystals.
-Don't refreeze melted ice cream. The texture will be compromised and you'll end up with a product that will be gooey or covered with ice crystals.
-Store ice cream in the body of the freezer -- the freezer door isn't cold enough.
-The texture of the ice cream left in the container changes every time you take it out. With that in mind, you've got two options: eat it in short order, or decant the ice cream from the ice cream machine into several small containers.
-Commercial ice creams have stabilizers added to them to increase their freezer life; homemade ice cream should be eaten within 2 to 3 days of preparation. To experiment, taste a mouthful of homemade ice cream every day over a week or so and notice the difference in taste and texture.
Did you know?
-In 1988 Palm Dairies (Alberta) set a world record for the largest ice cream sundae in the world -- the ice cream weighed 44,689 pounds, 8 ounces and was topped with 9,688 pounds of syrup and 537 pounds of topping.
-According to the International Ice Cream Association, Sunday is the best day for ice cream sales.
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Click here for a basic vanilla ice cream recipe you can try at home.
Check out the Foodie Friends category in our forums and share some of your favourite cooking tips.
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