Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream Desserts

The Ice Cream System

My ice cream recipe system has four steps: Prep, Cook, Chill, and Freeze. Occasionally a recipe contains an Advance Prep step, which must be completed before you start the ice-cream-making process.

Advance Prep

Advance Prep covers everything you need to do before you start making your ice cream, frozen yogurt, or sorbet. If an ice cream contains a fruit sauce or mix-in, you need to prepare it before you begin. All of my frozen yogurts require straining the yogurt, which must be done at least 6 hours in advance. When a recipe has an Advance Prep step, you’ll need to budget a bit more time.

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Prep

Prepping is about your mise en place, your setup. It means measuring everything out and getting everything ready to go so that it is there the moment you need it. Measure out the cornstarch and mix it with a little of the milk to make a slurry. Whip the cream cheese until it is completely smooth, then set aside. Zest and/or juice any citrus fruits. Being prepared makes the whole process easier and more enjoyable. You don’t want to be scrambling to find something when the cream base is cooking, for example, or you could overcook and ruin it.

Cook

Almost every ice cream recipe in this book is cooked briefly on the stovetop. Cooking the base provides stability and creaminess in the finished ice cream. While the mixture boils, a set of extraordinary things happens. Sugar liquefies and binds with the water in the milk and cream, which helps to keep the ice cream supple and smooth when frozen. Some water is evaporated out as steam, which concentrates the protein in the mixture and gives the ice cream a thicker, chewier body. Heat also denatures the whey proteins, allowing them to bind with water and prevent ice crystals. Additionally, a small amount of the fat in the cream and milk will also bind with water and prevent iciness in the ice cream. All of this magic happens as the ice cream bubbles away for 4 minutes.

Chill

The Chill step is what you do after you remove the mixture from the heat. For ice creams, you first slowly stir the hot cream mixture into the awaiting softened cream cheese. Other recipes may call for adding or removing herbs or spices.

The most crucial thing about this step is to ensure that the ice cream mixture cools down quickly. Warm milk and sugar can be a food-safety hazard, because bacteria (some harmful, some not) love to eat sugar and propagate in warm milk. The fastest way to cool the mixture is to pour it into a 1-gallon Ziploc freezer bag, push all the air out, seal it, and submerge it in an ice bath that is heavy on the ice. The bag provides more surface area to cool the mixture more evenly and quickly than any other method, and your base will be ready to freeze in less than 30 minutes. Using a Ball jar instead and giving it a spin in the ice bath every few minutes also works, but you will need a couple of hours for it to chill completely. The traditional bowl set over an ice bath works too, but be careful not to get any water into your ice cream base. You can also chill the mixture overnight in the fridge.

However you do it, it is imperative that the ice cream mixture be below 40°F through and through before you put it in the canister where it will freeze, or it won’t work. And if it does not freeze, you will need to remove it from the canister and put it back into the fridge, clean the canister, and freeze it for 12 hours, then try again the next day.

Note: I don’t usually use an ice bath when cooling sorbet mixtures, because these are not very hot and there is less of a food-safety issue than with warm milk and sugar. Instead, you can chill sorbet mixtures right in the fridge, as indicated in the recipes. If you are in a hurry, however, a quick dip in an ice bath will speed up the process.

Freeze

If you’ve just purchased your ice cream machine, you’ll need to chill the canister in your freezer for at least 24 hours, so that it becomes fully frozen. Going forward and after washes, it can be chilled for 12 hours, but no less. If possible, store your empty ice cream canisters in the freezer so they remain cold and are always at the ready.

Assemble your ice cream machine, turn it on, and pour in the cold ice cream base, frozen yogurt, or sorbet. Turning the machine on before you pour prevents the mixture from freezing too heavily on the walls of the canister before churning starts. Once the ice cream is churning, you can add any essential oils—since oils can collect on the sides of a plastic bag or bowl, it’s better to add them right to the cream when it is in the machine, so they don’t get left behind.

Let your ice cream churn for about 20 minutes. I churn it until it is the consistency of soft-serve. Then quickly remove it from the canister and put it into your freezer container. If you want to layer in a variegate or mix-in, do so as you pull the ice cream from the machine. Then cover the surface of the ice cream with parchment paper, get it into the coldest part of your freezer (the back), and freeze for at least 4 hours. (Don’t use plastic wrap; it can get caught in any folds and is hard to see and remove.)

Allowing your ice cream to harden fully is an important step. During the time in the freezer, the flavors will open up and bloom into the cream. It takes longer to eat this American-style ice cream than some other ice creams. The warmth of your tongue sweeps a perfect amount off for the flavors to volatilize before going down the hatch, part of the charm of ice cream.

No matter how cold the ice cream gets, the sugar in it never completely freezes. Rather, it becomes attached to the water in the milk and cream and creates an unfrozen semiliquid that keeps the ice cream pliable and elastic when frozen. Otherwise, you would not be able to scoop it.

Scooping The first trick for scooping ice cream is to choose an oblong container that gives you a runway: flat and long is preferred over deep and round. Depending on how cold your freezer is, you may need to allow your ice cream time to warm up a little before scooping; I let it sit on the counter for about 10 minutes. When you scoop your ice cream, use a dry ice cream scoop, such as a Zeroll scoop. Do not wet it, especially not with hot water. Water will glaze your ice cream with a thin layer of ice. Hot water or a hot scooper will melt the ice cream too much and then the remaining ice cream will crystallize faster when you return it to your freezer. A room-temperature scooper is always the way to go: it will melt just a little bit of ice cream as you run it over the surface, and that will give the scoop enough slide.

Equipment

The equipment needed to make these recipes is all readily available and inexpensive. I created the recipes in this book to use the same size pans—usually a 9-inch round or square pan, a quarter sheet pan, a 4-quart saucepan and other standard kitchen equipment. As for the ice cream machine, it’s a must, but there’s no need to break the bank.

Ice Cream Machines We used four different models of home ice cream machines to test the recipes in this book: the Cuisinart ICE-21 1½-quart canister machine; the new Breville ice cream bowl attachment, the Freeze & Mix, for its excellent stand mixer (which we have used for years in our test kitchen); Breville’s self-contained ice cream maker, the Smart Scoop, and the new Cuisinart soft-serve model ICE-45.

The Cuisinart ICE-21 freezes ice cream 25 percent faster than the ICE-20 model I used for the recipes in my first book. As a result, the ice creams don’t get quite enough air whipped in and they come out a little heavier. So with my slight adjustments the recipes in this book will work with either the older or the newer model.

The Breville Freeze & Mix whips quickly and also incorporates quite a bit of air; we regularly got three pints out of each batch with this machine, one more than we got from the Cuisinart. The ice cream is fluffier, but not in a way that detracts from the experience. The stand mixer itself is a great investment—it’s the best on the market for a home kitchen.

The Breville self-contained plug-and-play machine makes great ice cream. It can do successive batches with no wait between to freeze the canister, though each succeeding batch will take longer as the housing heats up. The ice creams from this machine are excellent. It comes at a hefty cost ($250 to $400), but if you make ice cream a lot and are happy to have an ice cream machine always at the ready on your counter, it might be a good investment.

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Finally, we used the Cuisinart ICE-45. This soft-serve machine is actually exactly the same as the canister machine in terms of spinning and freezing the ice cream, but the ice cream is extruded from underneath the canister through a nozzle. If you practice, you can get really good at dispensing it, which is fun especially for kids, who delight in playing ice cream shop. You can use any of our ice cream recipes in the soft-serve machine, and vice versa.

How does an electric ice cream machine work? The canister is very cold, and the ice cream starts to freeze in thin layers along the inside walls. The dasher spins at a specific rate, scraping the long ice crystals that have built up off the sides of the canister. Those long, jagged ice crystals are forced into the center of the machine, where they tumble around and become smaller, rounded ice crystals, which will be smoother on your tongue. All the while, as the ice cream is churned, a small amount of air is whipped in, which is important for the texture. Without any air, the ice cream will be too compact; too much air, and the ice cream will become powdery.

4-Quart Heavy-Bottomed Saucepan For making ice cream, poaching fruit, and making sauces, a 3½-quart pan will work, but keep a close eye when cooking the milk mixture for ice cream, so it doesn’t boil over. Be sure that the pan has a heavy bottom so that it heats evenly.

Baking Sheets and Pans Professional sheet pans and rimmed baking sheets conduct heat evenly and won’t burn the bottom of whatever you are baking. They stack together and can be easily stowed away. It’s nice to have both half and quarter sheet pans. For the recipes in this book, I also use 9-inch round cake pans and 8-by-8-inch baking dishes.

Whisk A good-quality medium stainless steel whisk is essential for incorporating the milk mixture into the cream cheese, for whipping eggs, and for many other tasks. A balloon whisk is good for whipping cream; it is bigger and has more wires than a regular whisk.

Bowls: Small, Medium, and Large I usually like metal bowls best, but I also have a thing for milk-glass bowls and for the plastic OXO ones with rubber bottoms and pouring spouts. You can use what you like. The important thing is to have at least three mixing bowls, small, medium, and large.

Food Processor A food processor is useful for pulverizing, pureeing, chopping, and the like. It’s essential when making Sugar Dough.

Blender For homogenizing and blending, as in the Crème sans Lait recipe, a blender works better than a food processor. In this case, any decent brand will suffice.

Freezer Set your freezer on its coldest setting, so that the temperature is 0°F or below. Store ice cream or ice cream desserts in the coldest part of your freezer, the back.

Heatproof Spatulas Heatproof silicone spatulas are unrivaled for stirring ice cream bases and other hot liquids. Buy the one-piece kind, not the type with wooden handles; the wood can rot no matter how often you remove the handle, clean it, and dry it. The wooden-handled ones can also harbor bacteria.

Heavy-Duty 1-Gallon Ziploc Freezer Bags Cooling an ice cream base in a heavy-duty 1-gallon Ziploc freezer bag laid flat in an ice bath is not only the fastest and safest method but also the easiest way to store it. The bag keeps air out and it gives the base a much greater surface area than, say, a jar or a bowl set over an ice bath. Bacteria don’t stand a chance, and you’re ready to freeze your ice cream in less than 30 minutes.

Ice Cream Scoopers I have two scoopers that I am completely wedded to. The Zeroll scoop has heat-conductive fluid in the handle, which transfers the heat of your hand to the scoop, so the ice cream releases easily. The Rösle scoop is sturdy and sleek, with sharp edges that cut through ice cream perfectly; it reminds me of those antique metal scoopers that also work well but are usually too covered in rust or limescale to use.

Ice Cream Bar Mold In my opinion, silicone molds are the only way to make ice cream bars. They are easy to fill and it’s easier still to remove the bars, so you don’t have to melt them to get them out. If you are making J-Bars, you will need these.

Other Essentials for Every Kitchen

• Bench scraper
• Cheesecloth
• Measuring cups
• Measuring spoons
• Parchment paper
• Pastry bags and tips
• Pie cutter
• Sieve
• Vegetable and “soft-skin” peelers (see Sources)

Ingredients

Some ingredients vary in composition from brand to brand, which can have an effect on the finished dessert. I used the ingredients below to test all of the recipes in this book. The ice creams and desserts are relatively pure and uncomplicated, so using the finest ingredients you can find, such as grass-fed or organic milk and cream or high-quality chocolate and cocoa, can make all the difference.

Butter My favorite all-purpose butter is Organic Valley cultured butter, because culturing makes some of the lactose (milk sugar) convert to lactic acid, which makes the butter noticeably more flavorful.

Buttermilk For the recipes in this book, buttermilk is always cultured low-fat, which is readily available these days.

Cream Cheese Cream cheese gives these ice creams a little oomph, a little more body. (If you leave it out of these recipes, your ice cream will still be fabulous, just a little thinner.) Use Organic Valley or Philadelphia brands.

Cocoa Powder Dutch-processed cocoa, also known as alkalized, is very round, full, soft, and complex. “Dutch process” means the cocoa has been treated in order to make it more water-soluble—so it will quickly dissolve into your sugar syrup. Cocoa that has not been Dutch-processed, sometimes called natural cocoa, is sharper, more earthy, and a softer brown. Despite being lighter in color, it can have a darker flavor. Many people don’t like it as much as Dutch-processed chocolate, but I love it in certain ice creams. You can choose whichever you prefer for these recipes.

Light Corn Syrup In ice creams and in baking, we use corn syrup as a humectant, for its water-attracting quality, which comes from glucose, not fructose. Adding a bit of corn syrup in place of table sugar actually makes the ice cream less sweet. Look for regular light corn syrup, without high fructose. Fructose makes the syrup sweeter—you don’t want that.

Self-Rising Flour Self-rising flour is just flour with baking powder and salt added. You can make your own by adding 1½ teaspoons baking powder and ¼ teaspoon salt to every cup of flour in the recipe and sifting them together.

Gluten-Free Flour We use two different brands of gluten-free flour, Pamela’s and Cup 4 Cup, to test these recipes. Pamela’s Baking Mix also works in a pinch and may be easier to find.

Sugar We use only white cane sugar, not beet sugar. Beet sugar burns too easily. The ice creams we sell in our shops and online are made with vegan sugar. Muscovado, light or dark brown, or palm sugar can all be used instead, but remember your ice cream will take on the flavor of the sugar you choose.

Ice Cream Parlor

Ice cream is not simply a dessert, it’s a moment. You can spend all day picking out a flavor, but once you do, you have no choice but to be present with it. Engage with it. Lick it before it melts down your arm.

It’s not just beautiful flavors that make ice cream such a delight. If you start with good ingredients, it will surely taste good. But the real work of an ice cream maker begins with texture and body. Because if the ice cream is icy, soupy, crumbly, or thin, the whole experience becomes forgettable. I spend a lot of time thinking of new flavors, but I spend more worrying about texture. If an idea for a new flavor is what gets me up in the morning, it’s the textural issues that keep me up at night. It’s not great ice cream unless flavor, texture, body, and finish are all in sync. That’s hard to achieve when using fresh ingredients, because everything you add to ice cream upsets the balance.

In this chapter, I give you my improved classic ice cream and frozen yogurt bases, a brand-new rich and silky custard base, and a killer vegan base called Crème sans Lait. I cannot say enough about Crème sans Lait. It’s super-creamy and scoopable, with surprising dairy flavor. You can make it in so many flavors that anyone is sure to love it, even if it is vegan. With these four bases as your tools, you can make smooth, dense, dreamy, delicious scoops to adorn your desserts. Use them to make the ice creams straight out of this chapter, or mix and match from the other chapters in this book (or in Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home) and layer flavors and textures to create your own unique ice creams.

When crafting your own flavors, it’s usually good to keep it simple. I rarely do more than two or three flavors layered in one ice cream. Occasionally, I’ll add something crunchy and a sauce. Flavors that have too much going on feel cluttered. The goal is to strike a perfect balance and if you do, the flavor will taste and feel like a symphony, with everything unfolding at the right moment.

All of the ice creams in this chapter can be used in many ways. My recipe for Salty Vanilla Frozen Custard is tailor-made for filling Éclairs or Cream Puffs. But it also can be a rich, eggy frozen custard base for other flavors—just add a handful of chopped nuts, a sprinkling of Gravel, or some cake crumbles. One of my favorite new flavors of the past couple of years is Absinthe & Meringue, which we made to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Igor Stravinsky’s groundbreaking work The Rite of Spring. When you add a couple of drops of bitters and some crushed orange candies in the mix, you get Triumph Ice Cream, which is inspired by the vintage cocktail of the same name. This lovely variation makes the perfect digestif and dessert in one.

The point is, the flavors are now yours. Make them straight up, or pull elements from other flavors, other chapters in this book, or from the recipes in my first book, to create your very own flavors. You have the keys to the kingdom!

Sweet Cream Ice Cream

My classic ice cream base. I also love it on its own.

This is your new and improved go-to ice cream base. I updated and tweaked it from the base recipe in my first book to accommodate new ice cream machines, but it also works just as well in the older or even vintage models.

You will find that it is smooth and creamy with a beautifully scoopable body. This Sweet Cream Ice Cream is the base for many of the ice cream recipes in this book—it can be used to make any flavor you wish. It is wonderful by itself or in a sundae or with any sauce or jam layered throughout.

You can customize this and other ice creams with the addition of essential oils and extracts, fruits, herbs, spices, nuts, crumbled cakes, cookies, and gravel, as well as jams and sauces (see To Add Variegates). When using essential oils, go lightly and taste often—usually just 2 to 5 drops will do.

The simplest flavors are often the finest. One of our all-time biggest hits, and one of my personal favorites, is the variation presented here, where the Sweet Cream Ice Cream is swirled with Blackberry Jam.

Makes about 1 quart

2⅔ cups whole milk

1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons cornstarch

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2 ounces (4 tablespoons) cream cheese, softened

⅛ teaspoon fine sea salt

1½ cups heavy cream

¾ cup sugar

¼ cup light corn syrup

Prep Mix about 2 tablespoons of the milk with the cornstarch in a small bowl to make a smooth slurry.

Whisk the cream cheese and salt in a medium bowl until smooth.

Fill a large bowl with ice and water.

Cook Combine the remaining milk, the cream, sugar, and corn syrup in a 4-quart saucepan, bring to a boil over medium-high heat, and boil for 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and gradually whisk in the cornstarch slurry. Bring the mixture back to a boil over medium-high heat and cook, stirring with a heatproof spatula, until slightly thickened, about 1 minute. Remove from the heat.

Chill Gradually whisk the hot milk mixture into the cream cheese until smooth. Pour the mixture into a 1-gallon Ziploc freezer bag and submerge the sealed bag in the ice bath. Let stand, adding more ice as necessary, until cold, about 30 minutes.

Freeze Remove the frozen canister from the freezer, assemble your ice cream machine, and turn it on. Pour the ice cream base into the canister and spin until thick and creamy.

Pack the ice cream into a storage container. Press a sheet of parchment directly against the surface and seal with an airtight lid. Freeze in the coldest part of your freezer until firm, at least 4 hours.

To Add Variegates: For layering jams or sauces into ice cream, start by drizzling a spoonful into the bottom of the storage container and spreading a layer of ice cream over it. Add a few more spoonfuls into the nooks of the ice cream, and then add another ice cream layer. Continue the sauce and ice cream layering until all the ice cream is used. The sauce should not cover the whole layer. Note that you do not want to “swirl” in the sauce because it will get lost in the ice cream altogether; instead, try to keep it in small pockets throughout the ice cream for a more dramatic presentation and flavor. I also like to add a few final spoonfuls on the top for decoration, just before covering with parchment.

Sweet Cream Ice Cream with Blackberry Jam

As you pack the ice cream into a storage container, layer in ½ cup of chilled Blackberry Jam.

Absinthe & Meringue Ice Cream

Absinthe imparts a mild licorice flavor; airy, sweet meringue adds lightness; and matcha powder imbues color and a crisp finish.

The year 2013 marked the one hundredth anniversary of Igor Stravinsky’s symphony, with accompanying ballet, The Rite of Spring. We created Absinthe & Meringue Ice Cream for the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and BalletMet’s production that spring to help take the audience back to the time of its debut in Paris in 1913.

The Rite of Spring is a story about primitive desires, emotions, and reactions. It was in stark contrast to the way of life of most upper-class Parisians. The highly charged production knocked them straight off their rockers. Bohemians, however, applauded the production’s boldness and break with tradition. The tension between the upper and bohemian classes caused a near-riot at the ballet’s premiere, but the symphony would change music and tastes forever.

Source: https://gardencourte.com
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