Culinary expert Colleen Miner offers tips for making homemade ice cream.
- The basic ingredients in ice cream are sugar, eggs, milk or cream, and the flavorings of your choice. There are several substitutions that can be made to reduce the fat--yogurt, skim milk or a mixture of milk and cream can be used instead of cream. Low-fat buttermilk is also an alternative.
- If you use alcohol such as Grand Marnier and other liqueurs in the ice-cream mix, keep in mind that too much could keep the ice cream from freezing.
- If you prefer to use vanilla, try soaking a vanilla pod in the cream overnight. Scrape the beans from the pod and add the bean flakes into the mix.
- The ice-cream batter must be cooked in order for the mixture to be pasteurized. A double boiler works best for this because the mixture is less likely to burn. Stir constantly to prevent the eggs from curdling. Cook until the mixture is 160 degrees or until it has thickened. When the process is complete, pour it through a sieve to remove any egg particles.
- Keep the ice-cream batter in the refrigerator overnight if possible. This will improve the texture of the finished product. If you don't have the time to store the batter overnight, then refrigerate it for at least four hours. After removing it from the refrigerator, add the final flavoring ingredients, such as vanilla or fresh fruit before beginning the freezing process.
- If you are adding fruit to the ice cream, make sure that you cover it in sugar. Otherwise it will have ice crystals around it because of all the water in the fruit.
- Always use crushed ice for freezing ice cream. This will allow more surface area to be covered.
- Rock salt--one of the key ingredients in homemade ice cream--can be purchased at most grocery and hardware stores. The salt melts the ice, then the liquid absorbs the heat from the ice-cream batter and forces the batter to freeze.
