More Creaming the Ice

[kerravonsen]

More ice-cream making tonight!
I also went to a supermarket liquor store at lunchtime to get some brandy, not for drinking, but to use as the heat/cold conductor between the fixed bowl and the removable bowl.

Experiment #3: using the Optifast coffee milkshake mix; also brandy for the conduction
Recipe: used 3 serves and 600ml of water, nothing else extra
Result: success! Creamy, cold, mildly coffee tasting, just a touch of sweetness. Froze 2/3 of it in two separate containers, ate the remaining 1/3 of it.
Lessons: (a) brandy works better than salt+water as a cold-conductor; (b) 600ml is a better quantity than 400ml - it doesn't freeze to the sides so much (c) it's nice to eat the ice-cream out of the bowl, so long as I remember to use a plastic spoon (they don't want metal damaging the surface of the bowl)

Experiment #4: trying for peppermint sorbet, made from peppermint tea
Recipe: 500ml peppermint tea, 4 tsp sweetener
Result: semi-fail; I ended up with granita rather than sorbet. It doesn't taste bad, but it wasn't what I was aiming for.
Lesson: a purely water-based mixture doesn't work; one needs to have something that binds it together somehow.
One option would be pureed fruit (a certain number of recipes use that), but I want to see if I can make something without fruit, since fruit isn't low-calorie enough (I'm only allowed two pieces of fruit a day). Maybe a weak gelatine mixture might work.

Comments

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

Igor is pleased, mistress.

[kerravonsen]

(grin)

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

The sorbet recipes I have use egg white as a binder. The proportions seem to be 2 egg whites to 600ml of mix.

[kerravonsen]

Isn't one supposed to avoid raw eggs for health reasons?

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

I can't remember. Health advice changes so often that I've largely given up believing in any of it. The latest seem to be that compact fluorescent tubes give out too much UV light for them to be used in reading lamps.

When I had a broken jaw a lot of the liquid diet I needed because nothing else could get between my teeth was raw egg beaten into a glass of sherry.

And dried egg white is in the baking section of supermarkets over here (UK). That's pasteurised in while it dries.

[feliciakw.livejournal.com]

I believe the reason behind warning against consuming raw eggs is the risk of salmonella poisoning. But I grew up drinking egg nog made with raw eggs, and eating raw cookie dough, and licking the cake batter bowl. So it's not something that I've ever been overly cautious about.

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Unless you're in a high-risk group (very young, elderly, or health-compromised) I don't think there's much reason to worry. The Japanese eat raw eggs all the time, and think we're very odd for worrying about getting salmonella from them. And, as reapermum says, dried egg white is safe. Here it's sold as meringue powder, I believe.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

The coffee one sounds yummy! I don't have room for any more kitchen devices though. :-(

[kerravonsen]

No, your kitchen has a limited amount of bench space. I put the ice-cream machine on top of my bar-freezer in the laundry. The laundry at my place is sort of an annex to the kitchen, considering that there's a freezer and the dishwasher in there. But it's a nice laundry, it has the same cork flooring as the kitchen (as well as being right next to it).

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

What brand of ice-cream maker did you get? I've been thinking about one for a while now, but didn't know how to pick one that actually works.

[kerravonsen]

I got an Italian one, the Nemox ice cream maker Chef 2200 but it was A$590 when I bought it, not A$715 which it is now. Still a huge amount of money, more than you would want to pay, I am certain.

However, David Lebovitz has good tips about ice cream, including some suggestions about ice cream machines, which are probably more suited to people in the US, considering he has links to Amazon on that page. So you could probably find something there that was more affordable.

One thing I say, though, is make sure that you get a machine that does its own freezing. The ones where you have to pre-freeze the bowl for 12-14 hours beforehand make ice-cream making a pain, and not worth doing. (Choice had an article about the "ten worst gifts to give at Christmas", and "ice cream machine" was on the list).