We have a Cuisinart brand ice cream maker. It’s not a $10 piece of junk, but then again, it’s not a $1000 super-duper machine either.
We’ve made various recipes for ice cream, and the texture is always wrong. When it first comes out of the machine it’s too soft, so it needs to be put in the freezer. The problem is that afterwards, it’s as hard as a rock and it’s not fluffy or soft or “creamy” (creamy meaning smooth and slightly giving when you press it in your mouth). I mean, criminy, we just made a recipe that called for 9 egg yolks and 1 cup of mascarpone cheese for 1 quart, and although it tastes incredibly rich, it’s still hard and not at all smooth and soft.
One theory we have is that there’s no air whipped in it to separate the crystals for that “fluffy” texture. Is that plausible? And if that is the case, is there any way to somehow whip air into it without completely melting it back into liquid?
When homemade ice cream comes out of the maker, it is always soft. This will be a given, no matter what the price of your machine. You just froze the mixture at a point just under 32 degrees. Deal with it.
You do have to then put it into a freezer which is colder than the salt/iice slurry. Unfortunately, we usually just have available our kitchen fridge/freezer. Which is set pretty cold, and will freeze it solid. I think that if you had the luxury of having a freezer with nothing in it and could set it at an ideal temp. you might get a better result.
But then, I could be totally wrong. After all, I notice that commercial ice cream that I have currently in the freezer has “dextrose gum” and 6 other foreign objects listed on the contents. Probably the impurities keep it the right consistency.
It seems to me that you made some super premium ice cream with no overrun; that is, no air is whipped in to make the icecream light and airy. I’ve made homemade icecream as well and my suggestion is to freeze the icecream after it comes out of the icecream maker for about a couple of hours and then bring it out to thaw slightly for about 10-15 minutes. I have to do that with commercially made premium icecream as well.
I have some experience here. The first thing is, you can’t go too wrong with ice cream. My basic recepe is right out of the Kitchenaid manual. Something like:
2 cups milk
2 cups cream
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
tiny bit of salt (I leave this out).
mix like crazy and cook a bit; maybe 3 minutes to kill germs and get the egg firm.
Since this doesn’t fit my container, I add more milk to fill it about 80% full. And I don’t use quite that much sugar, and will toss in some chocolate.
I use as much ice as I can get into the maker, and continually add more ice. A cup of salt in the ice is probably too much. I use a cheap thermometer to measure the temperature of the brine, which is about 28 deg F. I put in the ice, put most of the salt around the top, and pour in some water to get the mixture going. In order to look busy, I add more salt and ice every few minutes, but it’s not real important. The cranking takes about 45 minutes, max.
It’s not as firm as I like, so I try to prepare it a day in advance so it will be in the freezer overnight. I take the paddle out and hand it to a volunteer. I quick wash the salt off the outside of the container, as I don’t want salt in my freezer where it will stay forever and cause rust. Then I put the can in the freezer.
If the result is rock hard, you must not have done enough cranking. Freezing does make it pretty hard, so I transfer it to a plastic bowl. The resulting hand packed ice cream is easily scooped and rarely sees sunrise.
I’m skeptical and that any home machine will have enough power to make hard ice cream. I have a hand cranker and turn it until I can’t turn it any more. It’s still kind of runny, so I put it in the freezer. I believe getting air into the mix, along with the crystalizing, is needed for good texture; so I crank as long as I am getting closer to ice cream.
We got the Cuisinart a few months back and it’s been working fine.
Alton “Good Eats” Brown says that you get a finer grain if you make sure all the ingredients are well chilled before starting up the ice cream maker. Mix everything and put it into the refrigerator overnight. See http://www.foodtv.com/foodtv/recipe/0,6255,144,00.html for a recipe.
I make ice cream at home with an electricaly powered model that uses a freezing canister instead of ice and salt. I discovered that at a certain point the mixture will be firm enough that it sticks to the agitator, but is still far from frozen. I’ve been using a chopstick to stir it so that it can continue to churn. If the mixture is still soft enough that the motor can mix it, it hasn’t chilled long enough. If you put it in the freezer while it’s still half-frozen, you end up with rock-hard frozen cream instead of ice cream. I agree with jsleek that most electric home ice cream makers are hopelessly underpowered (and the freezer canister types don’t have enough coldness to make more than a half batch).
We have an electric one that uses the freezing canister too, Lumpy. The ice cream is NOT hard when it’s done mixing in the machine; when it’s “done” it’s very soft, much softer than the “soft serve” ice cream at Dairy Queens et al.
The problem is that that version is TOO soft, and needs to be stuck in the freezer. But that’s when it turns into a rock. It sounds like when we think it’s “done”, it’s not really done (according to where Lumpy said “If the mixture is still soft enough that the motor can mix it, it hasn’t chilled long enough”); but we’ll have it mix and mix until the freezing canister is starting to warm up and can’t be used anymore, and it’s STILL too soft.
So, if that’s what always happens (my mixer just doesn’t have enough power to properly make ice cream), is there anything I can do, or am I doomed to rock ice cream?