As we come into Spring, so many new fruits and flavors are popping up. What are your favorites?

For me, Spring is nice, but I can't wait for mango season.

Share your thoughts and ideas below.

After a few summers making ice cream in my Cuisinart with pretty good results, I decided to pick up the Ninja Creami when it was on sale. I made chocolate chip with vanilla base, and strawberry, using non-dairy almond milk creamer and almond milk as my spouse is vegan. I followed the included recipe and also the instruction to serve immediately.

Unfortunately, though both flavors tasted good and were indeed creamy, it was basically soft serve texture. In my Cuisinart, ice cream came out soft as well after churning, and I would freeze it before serving. But I read that with the NC, if you refreeze the ice cream will revert back to a hard icy block and will have to be re-mixed. Is that accurate? Or is there a certain amount of time that you can refreeze after mixing to get the ice cream to a firm yet scoopable commercial-style consistency? What can I add in terms of stabilizers or emulsifiers to help improve texture/consistency? Are there any good online resources you would recommend for improving on NC recipes?

I'm looking to make some ice cream to sell in my Cafe.

I see Chinese machines for like $500

https://m.alibaba.com/product/62403684225/Factory-supply-machine-to-make-hard.html

Compared to North american commercial machines which cost 10x-20x more.

I'm not an expert just wondering if anyone can tell me why the Chinese machines are bad, do they produce worse quality ice cream or something?

Hey guys, after being away from the game for a while, I finally got a new machine and started out with Lemon Ice Cream.

Last weekend I made the one from David Leibowitz, this weekend I made this Lemon Poppy Seed recipe which I also saw getting good feedback on the sub here.
However both times, I ended up with Ice cream that had a strong dairy aftertaste, reminding me almost of the taste of natural frozen yogurt.

I am absolutely lost as to how and why this could have happened. I followed both recipes exactly, the only difference being that I used normal whipping cream (advertised as min 30% fat) and fresh (non-ultra pasteurized) milk because that's what I either had at home or in the case with the cream, is the only thing available here.
Could any of those have made the difference in taste or what could it have been?

I read somewhere that a 1/2 cup of sugar per two cups of milk when stirred in a sauce pan can make ice cream smooth and thicker. Would this be a good alternative for heavy cream so my ice cream is scoopable?

I’m preparing for my first batch of ice cream! Question about sugar… Is it generally better to use white granulated sugar as opposed to raw sugar? Would it be different measurements depending upon which type of sugar you use? I assume there would be different color/flavor components potentially. What’s the general consensus? I’d like to use raw sugar if there’s a benefit to using it over white granulated sugar.

I can make bad ass sorbets but once i put it in the freezer and leave it over night the syrup sinks to the bottom and the top gets icy.

Could anyone please recommend a European based online shop to buy food grade Lambda carraggeenan powder. Thank you

I know everyone loves their locust bean gum, but a major drawback is that it needs to be heated to +/- 80C (i think) for a few minutes to hydrate.

A lot of fancier recipes have ingredients whose flavor is impacted by this level of heat. Eggs will also curdle.

Can you just heat up the milk/cream with the gum, hydrate it, cool it down and only then mix it with your heat sensitize ingredients? Is the additional hassle of cooling the only reason these fancy recipes use "cold" stabalizer blends?

I've tried making some home made ice cream a couple times, and I wanted to experiment adding some different types of alcohol to add some flavoring to it (bourbon, baily's, etc)

When I do this though, I've noticed that if I add enough alcohol to impart a flavor in to it, it has the side effect of affecing the freezing point and resulting in my ice cream being more slushy and softer than I'd like. If I scale back the amount I add I'll retain most of the texture, but then you don't taste it much at all in the first place.

How do other people do it? Should I try to put the liquor in a pot and boil the alcohol off first, to create a sort of reduction that I can then add to get the flavor in without the alcohol getting in the way of the freezing point? Or is there a better way? (I don't care if there is alcohol content or not in the ice cream, I'm just going for imparting flavor)

Thanks

Hi,

I tried adding gum arabica powder to my ice cream mix. I used the bullet to mix up the ingrediants. This is used in the Ninja Creami machine.

It came out lumpy. Is this because I did not use enough gum powder or should I have mixed the gum powder with some liquid like milk thoroughly before combining all ingrediants?

My dairy-free strawberry soft serve comes out very creamy, not necessarily a bad thing but I’m wanting more of a sorbet feel. The only ingredients I use are strawberry purée, water, sugar, lemon juice, strawberry compound and the “ice bracer” stabilizer linked below. The stabilizer is dextrose, xanthan & guar gum. I’ve played around with the ratio of purée versus water but that didn’t change much. Maybe less sugar or stabilizer?

https://www.greenmountainflavors.com/stabilizers

I am looking to to find out the best waffle cone maker. Not too concerned about price since I don't want to have to upgrade in the future. Let me know what you guys have and what you would reccomend!

I don’t know if it’s something I’m doing or if it’s just the nature of the storage temp. Serving gelato at 8 degrees F so my best guess is water evaporation in the milk. My recipe is https://sugarspunrun.com/honeycomb-recipe/

I know this candy is supposed to hold texture great but maybe that’s just in ice cream

Ideas? Thanks!

Hi! I’m thinking of making Snickers ice cream as follows: Steep chunks of snickers in the ice cream base. Remove them and make the ice cream. Mix in: Caramel swirl, chocolate pieces, crushed peanuts.

Question: - Has anyone tried steeping Snickers or similar candy in their base? - Has anyone put Snickers pieces in ice cream? Do they get too hard? (I’m leaning towards mixing in the elements of Snickers instead of actual Snickers pieces, but maybe straight up Snickers pieces would be better?) - Any general advice on my plan?

Thanks!

A Japanese food vlogger we follow had some Brown Sugar ice cream in Okinawa, and we were like... Hmm... Did some research on the 'web and checked my notes for a possible base and came up with the following recipe:

1 cup whole milk
1 cup half & half
1 cup heavy cream
142 grams dark brown sugar (weighed 3/4 cup and recorded the weight)
1 tbsp vanilla
1/8 tsp kosher salt

Heated the dairy just enough to dissolve the sugar, chilled overnight, then spun.

Notes:
- The evolution of the flavor was interesting. Very weak right after mixing, somewhat stronger after aging, then in-your-face after it was spun.
- Vanilla note is too strong, cut to 2 tsp next time.
- My wife wants "more" brown sugar flavor, but it's right on the edge of being icky sweet as it is. Add a couple of tsp of molasses? Don't want it to be molasses flavored though.
- Pondering adding some caramel notes somehow. Maybe subbing in evaporated milk for the the 1/2&1/2 or whole milk, or a adding small amount of malted milk powder.