Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker

[KeithA]

On 5/31/2020 at 4:29 PM, weezy said:

Well, my first go at it is a limited success.  I used a slight modification of the Ben & Jerry's base and I'm very happy with the flavor -- strawberry basil -- but I think I didn't chill the base enough because it only froze around the edges after churning for 25 minutes.  The canister got a full 26 hours in the chest freezer, so that was fine. 

I had about a quart of sliced strawberries that I had macerated with a couple of tablespoons of sugar and a couple of tablespoons of vodka.  I pureed most of the berries with all the juices and saved a few berries to add in at the end of the churn.  Then I ran the puree through a tamis -- ended up with a bit over 2.5 cups -- and afterwards reduced in the mike by a little over half and used 1/2 cup of the reduction and 1/2 cup of cream to replace the 1 cup of milk in the B&J recipe.  Steeped basil stems in the cream and tempered the eggs with the hot basil cream, and strained that.  Ended up adding a teaspoon of vanilla and about a tablespoon of lime juice to round the flavors.

At any rate, I put the loose mixture into a tupperware and stuck it in the freezer and I'm giving it a good stir about once an hour and it's starting to set up.  Fingers crossed that it keeps solidifying.  

ETA:  it did finally solidify.  Good texture and good flavor but I'm not in love with it.  I think the eggy-ness of the custard is fighting against the brightness of the fruit.    I think I'll try something like a coffee ice cream next time and see if I like that better.  

I agree with several of your observations. The ice cream generally forms and sticks some to the sides of the canister and the rest in the center is not liquid but is more of a soft serve texture. Once you freeze it for a few hours or overnight, it will harden nicely into a regular, scoopable ice cream.  I also agree that with fruit flavor you need to amp up the fruit and potential use less eggs to get a more fruit forward flavor instead of a nice custard with hint of fruit. 

I also recently got wrongly optimistic that I could use my one pre-frozen canister to make two batches of ice cream in one go. I made two flavored bases and then churned one for 25 minutes- it worked like normal producing great ice cream (a smores like creation of vanilla with refrigerated mini marshmallows, chocolate chips and crush graham cracker piece). I then as quickly as possible scooped out the first ice cream into containers and minimally wiped out the canister and immediately set it to rechurn and poured in my second base (blueberry cardamon). I was hopeful the canister would be cold enough but I was wrong, after churning for 20 minutes it was still all liquid base. All was not lost though as I poured the liquid base back into a container and re-refrigerated and re-froze the canister overnight. The next night the base turned into another great ice cream. Lesson learned.

I haven't done alcohol in the base and but it reminded me of this Serious Eats article about ice cream making myth busting: https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/07/ice-cream-myths.html

[weezy]

Thanks for the tips!

 

[porcupine]

Years (ok, decades) ago recipes I followed for alcohol-containing ice creams used a cooked candy syrup added to firm up the texture. IIRC the syrup was boiled to the soft-ball stage. Try investigating this and see if it helps.

[deangold]

15 hours ago, porcupine said:

Years (ok, decades) ago recipes I followed for alcohol-containing ice creams used a cooked candy syrup added to firm up the texture. IIRC the syrup was boiled to the soft-ball stage. Try investigating this and see if it helps.

We loved the texture we got. We do a good cook til 190 to 200 degrees after the eggs are added so we get a firm texture. We are not using that much liquor and our blend is 50-50 milk and Heavy cream 40%.

Next up we are making fresh strawberry with the strawberry syrup replacing some of the milk and offeset with extra cream and less sugar. We will use a little homemade Pimms in that. But if it is too icy or too soft, I bet your trick would help. 

[weezy]

Yesterday's experiment was spearmint-vanilla-chocolate chip using the B&J base recipe (steeped & strained the garden mint and tempered & cooked the egg custard).  Totally chilled the base before churning and it set up very nicely and has a lovely texture.  So damn good.  The spearmint/vanilla is much less toothpaste-y than the typical peppermint.  My sister is here for the weekend and this batch is more than half gone already.  

Also, I ordered the Jeni's book and it arrived yesterday, and there are a lot of tempting recipes in there that I will be exploring in the weeks to come.  Already waiting for corn season so I can try the sweet corn blackberry ice cream.

 

[deangold]

What I love about gelato making is how I have gone from needing to follow recipes exactly, to then modisying a recipe using calculations to make sure of fat & liquid content to now just being able to riff.

My latest riff is a strawberry gelato. We have some of last year's vintage in the freezer and used some forour sorbet. SO I took a cup of what amounts to local strawberry simple syrup, 1 cup mixed of heavy cream and regular milk, and 2 cups of heavy cream, and half the sugar I would normally use  in the hot mix, 6 egg yolks {one extra} and 1/2 cup sugar in the cold. I flavored the hot mix with black pepper, salt, two vanilla beans. After scalding the hot mix to 190 degrees I let it cool slowly to 140 degrees and then tempered the beanted egg yolks and sugar on slow. Then everything went back on the stove for heating to just 190 degrees {I originally cooked the custard to 200 then 195 and each time I would get a little eggy solids which I would strain out}. At 140 degrees I added 1 TBSP of vanilla double fold, 2 oz of Smith & Cross pot still Jamaican rum, a sprig of Thai mint and let it sit until at room temp. A run through the Conical fine mesh strainer and refrigerated overnight. I spun it yesterday. The traditional licking of the beaters and bowl were particularly delightful. 

Kay thinks I used too much rum, but I am not sure what this "too much rum" means. Sometimes I think she slips and speaks in Spot or some other unintelligible language. 

As always, we had egg whites left over and since I hate meringues and other typical uses, I decided to try something a little wacky. I lightly beat the whites, added hon dashi powder, soy, & mirin. I took some metal bowls and, coated them with sesame oil and put a couple of shrimp, some spring onion, a couple of seafood mushrooms. Then I steamed them in my presto cooker. My mistake was to use too much water and it overflowed the bowls and made everything a little soggy. I added a few drops of soy on top.We let them cook to warm and ate. I refrigerates one overnight and ate it cold the next morening for breakfast.

The result was not quite a egg white chawan mushi as that would be made from fully beaten eggs and dashi stock instead of powder would have been used. I used too much soy as the dish was distinctly salty. The overnight one was far better. This is a work in progress but I have my game plan for the next batch, but our next gelato making is going to result in a batch of coconut maroons: plain, chocolate chip and cocoa powder flavored. 

 

[weezy]

I made a peanut butter ice cream yesterday using the Jeni's ice cream base recipe -- it uses a small amount of cream cheese, light corn syrup and a cornstarch slurry, no eggs.  Now, the peanut butter may have thrown things out of whack, and while the flavor was good, the texture is terribly gummy.  With this one try using the base, I am not impressed.  I may try again with a flavor that doesn't add so much solids and fat to the base mix and see what happens.  

[weezy]

It was not my day for ice cream.  Decided to do another coffee ice cream; I made a batch of decaf concentrate cold brew to flavor it, went with the B&J tempered egg base with a nod to the Jeni's with a bit of a cornstarch slurry and a dribble of light corn syrup, no cream cheese.  It wasn't totally chilled thru when I went to churn it but I thought it was passable.  Well, about 15 minutes into the spin, the power at my house went out for no apparent reason for long enough that the canister lost its freeze.  Scraped it into a container and will spin again tonight. 

Was also baking a loaf of bread at the time and I missed the sweet spot and had the dough a bit on the wet side, and it semi-collapsed when the power went out.  Kept the oven closed and my fingers crossed.  The loaf is edible but doesn't look too good.  Oh well. 

[weezy]

I've decided the Jeni's base isn't pleasing to me.  There's a plastic-y quality to the creaminess that doesn't suit me. I think it's the cornstarch slurry causing it.   

[KeithA]

Recently made plain chocolate using a B&J recipe with unsweetened chocolate that produces a rich but maybe too bitter flavor. Anyone have a favorite chocolate base recipe that uses pre-sweetened chocolate?  Also made B&J original recipe Cherry Garcia (i.e. sweet cream base with dark chocolate chunks and sliced cherries) - it is pretty good but with the cherries left whole, it seems like they got icy in the freezer and I'm not sure I like the texture.

[deangold]

I used the one in the Cusinart recipe book with mods. It is based on using a 1.5 quart batch.

start with the Mexican style chocolate recipe.

increase the vanilla to 1 TBSP. If you can get the double fold vanilla, use 1-1/2 tsp vanilla and 1-1/2 tsp old grandad or some other budget priced GOOD bourbon.
I used more pepper but it was Aleppo and I used over a tablespoon of mixed fresh ground spices: Allspice, clove, a little black pepper, a tiny bit of black cumin, Ceylon cinnamon, Aleppo flakes. I started with less and added moe to taste. This was added as I scalded the milk and let it cook before tempering the eggs.
6 farmers market egg yolks.
64% Valrhona Manjari chocolate. Probably closer to 7 oz. 
1/4 teaspoon grey salt
add one scraped vanilla bean to the milk mix before scalding. Two if you are feeling flush. Get good vanilla beans and extract. Pensy's is not good but it is acceptable. Beanilla is great and standard pricing for really good vanilla. If you buy them 10 or more at a time, you need to have a vacumn sealer to keep the beans from drying out. 

On the technique,

I do not add the vanilla to the milk mix initially. I want the alcohol.

I scald the milk up to 190 to 200 degrees with a fair bit of stirring as I am creaming the yolks and sugar on the lowest speed on a stand mixer.

When it hits temp, I let it cool to 140 degrees, stirring often to help it cool, then I start tempering the egg mix and the milk/cream mix. I find tempering the egg mix at 190 degrees leaves an eggy residue that gets strained out. Do not strain the mix at this point, but just dont pour the vanilla bean as you temper. 

Once the egg mix is fully incorporated, reheat is over low to medium heat until 200 max, 190 is OK. Now strain over the chocolate and use a whisk to make sure it all melts and incorporates, but try not to get a  lot of air added at this point. 

When the cooked custard reached about 140, add the alcoholic additions. You can go up to double, but your gelato will wind up softer. I love it that way, but YMMV.

Let cool to 70 degrees on the counter, you have 2 hours in the safe zone. Refrigerate overnight. You will need to use a scraper to get the gelato base into the cuisinart.

If you deviate from this suggestion by any manner whatsoever, Spot the Cat {@SpottheCat6 on the twitts} will come and be very loud in his disapproval, and expect you to feed him Greenies. Don't say I did not warn you. 

[saf]

On 6/14/2020 at 7:26 AM, weezy said:

and while the flavor was good, the texture is terribly gummy.  With this one try using the base, I am not impressed. 

My first try with that base was also gummy. Later tries were much better.

Still don't know what I did to that first one though.

[KeithA]

Latest ice cream batch was stracciatela - vanilla with the perfect chocolate flakes throughout. Of course I had this super common gelato flavor before and always thought of it as italian chocolate chip - however that disguises the unique way you make it. Unlike regular chocolate chip where you swirl in premade chips or shavings/chunks of normal temperature chocolate - with stracciatela, you melt the chocolate to a liquid and then drizzle in the hot/warm chocolate onto the cold churning ice cream. This results in the chocolate instantly hardening when it hits the ice cream and the machine churn breaks it up and distributes it into flaky ribbons that you further break into flakes when you scoop the churned ice cream into your storage container. I highly recommend because it is really easy and fun - just microwave some chocolate to melt and drizzle in the last few minutes of your churn. It also results in a much better flake distributed throughout instead of an often too hard chunk of a chip that doesn't really blend into the ice cream.

One other note, for this batch I accidentally added a full cup of sugar instead of 3/4 cup and so decided I'd try throwing in a 3rd egg too. It was good but I didn't like the extra eggy-ness as much as when I do it with 2. Maybe because I use whole eggs and not just yolks but still not sold on the need to add 5-6+ egg (yolks) like some recipes call for.

I also had a bunch of leftover cherries from my CSA and so I made a black forest sauce recipe I found in a preserving cookbook - simple syrup, cocoa, and pitted/halved cherries that you simmer together for 20 minutes or so. The idea being you can top this as a sauce on ice cream or cake. I was thinking this would solve the overly icy cherries in my prior Cherry Garcia attempt. The sauce turned out good but maybe was too sweet with too much proportion of non-cherry parts to cherries. In the end it tastes like ok chocolate syrup with a cherry undercurrent and soft cherries to chew. I think next time I would do a 2 - 1 cherries to other ingredient ratio to let the cherries really shine.

[weezy]

I've got a base for a repeat of the spearmint-vanilla-choc chip ready to churn tonight.  I got blocked out of most of my last batch due to my sister's fondness for it.   I don't have to share it with her this time

Cherries are on order and will be delivered on Saturday, so will try the Jeni's roasted cherry goat cheese ice cream this weekend.

[KeithA]

Tried a new chocolate recipe and really like how it turned out. It is a no egg, Philadelphia-style ice cream. You simmer the cream, small amount of cocoa powder, and sugar and whisk to blend. Then, you melt in chocolate chunks/chips - I used a combo of 1/4 bittersweet to 3/4 semi-sweet chips because that is what I had and I was finding using too high cacao to be too bitter for our taste. Then you whisk in the milk. I then cooled it and put in the fridge to chill. I was a little worried when I took it out to churn and it had more of a chocolate pudding consistency, but I mixed it a little and then added to the ice cream maker. I continued to worry as it was still rather soupy after my usual 20-25 minute churn, but I let it continue to churn and after 30-35 minutes it turned into a dense soft serve. After it hardened in the freezer overnight, it was pronounced delicious by the family. A sweet, but not too sweet and not too dark chocolate with a dense, creamy texture. Hopefully my kid will like it even more when it gets added to her brownie ice cream cake that the little chocoholic requested. This chocoholic is looking forward to it.

[saf]

3 hours ago, KeithA said:

Tried a new chocolate recipe and really like how it turned out. It is a no egg, Philadelphia-style ice cream. 

That is very similar to my 2 favorite chocolate ice cream recipes, both from David Lebovitz. One with raspberries, one with peanut butter. Yes, I live with someone who does not love plain chocolate ice cream, and I love both of these, so it works..

Both recipes are from "The Perfect Scoop." They are online a number of places.

Here is the raspberry one.

Here is the PB one.

[Pool Boy]

We have the Jeni's ice cream cookbook (before they went nationwide and corporate, they made this book). We have had pretty great results and we use the cuisinart with compressor model with pretty good though not perfect, success. Lots of good recipes in there for sure.

[weezy]

I've been dreaming of a key lime pie ice cream and took a try at it today.  Swing and a miss, as they say.  Growing up, we always had the very basic lime juice/egg yolks/sweetened condensed milk in a graham cracker crust pie with a meringue on top, and that was the flavor profile I was going for.  Tempered the eggs with the cream and lime zest, added that to the sweetened condensed milk and lime juice, but  i didn't think ahead for the phase of chilling the base,  and ended up with  actual pie filling, not ice cream base.  I whisked it up with some whole milk and added some more lime juice before I started to churn it, but the ratios were off and flavors were muted, plus the texture was on the butter side of things.  I also got distracted and left my graham cracker crust in the oven too long and it went from buttery toasty to getting close to burnt.  Oh well.  Still edible but not nearly good enough.  Next time, tempered eggs and  cream separate from the lime juice and condensed milk so I dont' end up with a chemical cook of my base.  

[ALB]

ok- this is not about the cuisinart ice cream maker.. this is ABSENCE of ice cream maker question.

 

I let a friend borrow mine and she left for the beach. My sister requested making blackberry ice cream after we go to Larriland on Friday. I am looking for no-spin recipes, does anyone have one? Alternatively, I found this one online and left a question.. do you think it will work? Is there enough fat to keep it from getting icy?

https://www.sweetspicykitchen.com/desserts/blackberry-cheesecake-ice-cream/?fbclid=IwAR3HFBPWlL6ZbvIclGwDC0tG3WsLN9kvOBDaujgnN3ole8DUDbAv14DLtm8

[saf]

16 hours ago, ALB said:

ok- this is not about the cuisinart ice cream maker.. this is ABSENCE of ice cream maker question.

It might work. I would also try this technique. 

This is my favorite blackberry ice cream recipe. I strain the puree.

[ALB]

6 minutes ago, saf said:

It might work. I would also try this technique. 

This is my favorite blackberry ice cream recipe. I strain the puree.

Thank you for both tips! We will give it a shot.

[weezy]

Tried the Jeni's corn ice cream today.  It's a big old nope from me.  Just weird -- too sweet for corn, too savory for ice cream, without being interesting in either direction.  Also, this batch confirms my dislike of the cornstarch slurry used in Jeni's base recipe.  

[saf]

6 hours ago, weezy said:

 Also, this batch confirms my dislike of the cornstarch slurry used in Jeni's base recipe.  

My first batch using that technique was good. The next 2 were AWFUL. Then I got it right again.

I don't trust it though. It's too easy to mess up.

[Pool Boy]

I personally find no reason to ever make corn ice cream.

That said, I generally have very god results with Jeni's recipes. I have not made any in a couple of years, but I vaguely remember there is a tiny amount f basic cream cheese in some of the recipes - I do not recall ever doing a corn starch slurry.

What was the source of the recipe - we have her book on this that us about 10-12 years old, not sure if they ever made another one or more recipe cooks or not.

[saf]

On 7/29/2020 at 2:40 PM, Pool Boy said:

That said, I generally have very god results with Jeni's recipes. I have not made any in a couple of years, but I vaguely remember there is a tiny amount f basic cream cheese in some of the recipes - I do not recall ever doing a corn starch slurry.

It uses both corn starch and cream cheese. I also have the book, about 7 or 8 years old.