Un-cone-able icecream

[JayByrd]

I just made a batch of ice cream, loosely based on Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia. I say loosely because I used Montmorellancy cherries from my tree, and cream and milk from my goats. I sweetened the cherries and kept them soft in the ice cream by poaching them in sugar and cherry brandy. Yum! I chopped up a bagful of Lindt extra dark chocolate truffles, figuring they'd stay softer than most chocolate bits would. It tastes fantastic! I usually have problems with too much fat making the ice cream coat my tongue unpleasantly, but not this time.

Problem is I can't scoop up a ball of the ice cream to eat in a cone. It didn't freeze too hard, but it kind of crumbles and falls apart when I try to scoop some up. It doesn't have the tendency to stick to itself that mos ice cream does. I've never seen anything like this. Was it the brandy? I drained it off the cherries before adding them. I'm stumped. Any suggestions?

[JayByrd]

I think you guys nailed it. I bet it is the goat milk/cream. I have no idea what the fat content would be. Goat milk has smaller fat particles than cow milk does, so I usually wait a couple of days to let the cream rise to the top of a 1/2 gallon jar before skimming off a few ladle-fulls of cream. I keep a jar of this cream in the freezer, adding to it every day until I have enough to do something with it. Then I let it thaw, and usually skim it off again, since there will usually be a few inches of milk frozen at the bottom of each quart jar of cream. This is the cream I used in the ice cream I made the other day. The milk was from jars of fresh milk after I'd skimmed off the cream. But you guys are right about this just being an approximation of the recipe which called for a 2:1 ratio of cream to milk, assuming of course, standard homogenized cow's milk.

I did not make a custard with the eggs or heat the cream to cook the eggs. In fact, I made sure all my ingredients were cold before pouring them into the ice cream tub. The eggs come from my own chickens, well, actually my ducks, and I take a calculated risk in eating them raw. They are refrigerated within a few (<4) hours of being laid, so even if an egg were somehow infected, the bacteria wouldn't have much time to proliferate. I wouldn't treat a factory farmed egg this cavalierly, but eggs newly popped out of my own healthy girls? I'm not worried about them, and I dislike the taste of custard based ice creams. I recently found support for this opinion in Gail Damerow's article Local Eggs Are Safe Eggs published last year on InsideStorey. However, if playing around with my cream to milk ratios doesn't improve the texture of my ice cream, I may thaw a batch out and try cooking it and re-churning it.

[SporkChop]

It is definitely possible to overchurn your cream, turning it into goat butter if it runs too long. So first step is watching the time you spend; err on the gentler side. If it were me, I would ditch the egg whites in your recipe, add about another third to half cup of the liquid milk, and use a stabilizer like guar gum - experiment by starting with a scant teaspoon and see if things improve. It should do wonders to emulsify the fats and alcohol along with the remaining liquid ingredients.

[babette feasts]

Exactly, it turns to butter, or sweet custard with bits of butter. You want to churn your ice cream to soft-serve or slightly thicker consistency then either devour or harden in the freezer for several hours. Going until the motor of your machine stops is not going to be good for either the ice cream or the machine!

[ipsedixit]

If you are not going to use a custard-style base, ditch the eggs and use a stabliizer. It's not about safety, so much as taste and texture.

[acgold7]

The problem as you've described it isn't that the mix didn't freeze or was too soft, which would point to too much alcohol in the mix. It's that it's dry and crumbly, which I think means too high a proportion of milk solids. I think the culprit might be using your own goat milk, which doesn't have a standard proportion of milk fat and milk solids the way store-bought cow milk does, and upon which most recipes are based.

Without knowing those proportions, any recipe becomes a rough approximation and results are likely to vary considerably.

Just a guess, though. I do agree that cooking the custard is likely to help. By the way, you could still do this by melting, straining, cooking and respinning.

[babette feasts]

I agree, I suspect the goats milk/cream. Crumbly almost sounds like overchurned, which is easier to do with higher fat dairy. Jay, any guess on the fat % in your goat milk and cream? I know that goats milk and cow's milk have different size fat molecules - goat is smaller? - that may affect the texture as well, but I have never made goat milk ice cream so I'm not sure.

[JayByrd]

I didn't realize it was possible to over churn ice cream. Is there any way to recognize it while it is happening? I know sometimes I'll make a batch that will be thick enough to stall the motor in 20 minutes, while other times 40-60 minutes might go by while I keep adding more ice and salt.

[lemons]

There's an article in the current SAVEUR by Molly O'Neill about Jeni's Ice Cream in Columbus. I've had it, and the consistency is fantastic. Take a look at how she does. It's not simple, but you might try some of the steps she uses the next time you try it.

[JayByrd]

I'll have to try Jeni's method. I'm curious, and a couple of her recipes really tantalized my taste buds! I mean "The Darkest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World"? "Sweet Corn and Black Raspberry"? Whoa!

[JayByrd]

Ok, here is the recipe as I remember it:

My “On the Farm” version of Cherry Garcia Ice Cream

• 1 cup fresh Montmorency cherries, halved and pitted
• 1 cup cherry brandy
• ~ ½ cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 cups goat cream, cold
• 1 cup goat milk, cold
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 1 tsp cherry extract
• a few drops red food coloring
• 1 bag Lindt Lindor Extra Dark Chocolate Truffles, chopped

1. Poach cherries in brandy and sugar until softened. Drain and refrigerate.
2. Sip brandy.
3. Beat eggs, add sugar in slowly until creamy.
4. Add cream and milk and extracts / coloring.
5. Pour into ice cream maker’s tub, and turn on.
6. Add a little water, lots of ice, and rock salt around ice cream tub.
7. Listen for the motor to stall.
8. Add chocolate and drained cherries.
9. Run machine again until it stalls.
10. Scoop into tub and place in freezer.
11. Lick dasher and wait.

Any suggestions?

[nofunlatte]

That's a lot of liquor, but it doesn't all go into the ice cream base. How much is absorbed by the cherries? BTW, I don't use a rock-salt-utilizing machine, so I'm not really familiar with the expected consistency of ice cream made in them. It's probably been a couple of decades since I had any ice cream from one of them!

FYI--I use step 11 myself.

[JayByrd]

I love my ancient ice cream maker. It must be nearly as old as I am! One of my earliest childhood memories involves my father making ice cream with it. I "stole" it from my parents when they admitted they hadn't used it in years, then wowed them with the flavors I churned out of it. It is messy, noisy, occasionally I spill brine into the nearly finished ice cream, but I wouldn't give it up for anything! In fact, when I ran across a similar model at a junk store I snapped it up as a back up for when the motor in this one finally gives up the ghost. The little modern ones with the blue gel just turn me off. They don't get as cold as I'd like, and I have to either let the blue gel stuff take up room in my freezer all the time, or I have to plan ahead and freeze it before hand, and planning ahead has never been my strong suit!

[nofunlatte]

Never had any ice cream-making "history" in our family (we bought the rectangular cartons), so I never really had experience with the ice/salt varieties. But it sounds like you have some great memories (and you're quite adept with) the one you have! I have a couple of ceramic bowls that I inherited from my great-aunt (a fabulous cook, formerly doing it professionally for some minor royalty in the old world) and I love them and use them all the time (I think they are Cook-Rite Cookin Ware from the 1930s). I use them to proof bread dough, hold salads, etc. But it's the memories that are the best part of using them!

[arashall]

We still nurse along an old-fashioned hand-crank family icecream maker. It must be at least 30 years old, maybe more. We have other kinds, but it still makes the best icecream. Ours is tall and narrow, and freezes faster than the new, short machines. Glad to hear we're not the only ones still churning :-)

[biondanonima]

I'm not an ice cream expert by any stretch, but I wonder if the inclusion of raw eggs/egg whites might be part of the problem. When I use eggs in ice cream, I use the yolks only and make a cooked custard out of them. Perhaps more experienced ice cream chefs can comment on this?

[ipsedixit]

Agreed.

JayByrd, are you making a custard out of the eggs? Or are you using raw eggs. I presume when you add the cream you are adding heated cream, right? And then "cooking" the mixture to make a custard?

The thought of uncooked raw eggs mixed with brandied cherries and goat cream/milk is sort of unappetizing to say the least.

Also, I'd imagine the goat cream and milk may be throwing the viscosity of your "ice cream" off a bit. When I make goat cream ice cream I do not use any cream.. Just use equal portions of goat milk and heavy cream, a 1:1 ratio. The reason you use goat milk (as opposed to cream) is b/c goat milk is naturally already very high in fat. Using both goat cream and goat milk would make the fat content too high.

Other than not making a custard base and the combo of goat milk and goat cream, I'd imagine you need to get a new ice cream machine b/c it's not getting cold enough. Try refrigerating your ice cream mixture overnight in the tub before running it in the ice cream maker.

[bushwickgirl]

Tritto on the possible alcohol issue but, as ipse mentioned, it could be something else. Put it in a dish, put the cone upside down over it to crunch on and call it a day. It sounds too wonderful to put in a cone anyway.

[ipsedixit]

Alcohol doesn't freeze so the brandy might be the culprit.

But without knowing your entire recipe, it's almost impossible to say with certainty.

More info needed.

[nofunlatte]

It might be the alcohol, which tends to make ice creams softer. However, it sounds fantastic! I actually prefer ice creams a bit softer and your add-ins sound positively delicious.