Photo by ArtsySF and used with her permission.

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Sunday, May 18, 2008

Update: The Next Flavor in Development

I want to thank Lauren, Phil, and Christoph for coming out to taste my ice cream today. Their comments were insightful. As an engineer I am a very technical person. I really appreciate when someone can point to specific details within my work that need improvement. I want meet with all interested ice cream eaters again, but it may not happen before the end of June.

In the meantime, I am not going to put up another poll for the next flavor. Mrs. Fellow wants a banana based ice cream. It will be either banana pudding or banana cream pie. After that, I'll probably put one up again. This one may take a bit of time to post because I am beholden to the banana ripening process, but I will get it our as fast as I can.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am also a technical guy interested in making ice cream. Now I am facing some technical problems. The most important one is the overrun ratio of ice cream is very low, so the taste is smooth but very creamy. Are you using the ice cream maker without air injector? How can you combine the air bubbles with ice cream?
I will appreciate your kind help. Please communicate with me with email at james.miao@vlifeworld.com. thank you.

Ice Cream Fellow said...

James,

This is a great question and helps define one of the main differences between homemade and commercial ice cream.

Generally, overrun applies to commercial ice cream manufacture. The overrun allows the manufacturer to increase the volume by incorporating air as oppsed to increasing the amount of ingredients. As you would suspect, at the premium ice cream level, the overrun is lower. Compare same sized containers of Edy's Grand Double Churned to regular ice cream. You will notice a difference in weight. There is equipment to do this, but it is mostly used on the lower end and for light/diet ice cream products.

I am not aware of any equipment for home ice cream making that allows the incorporation of air, but why would you want to add it? Getting the right texture is a matter of the proportions of sugar to fats and waters to solids. There is a great explanation of this in the Chemistry of Ices chapter of Frozen Desserts by Caroline Liddel and Robin Weir. The book is from the UK so the annotations can be a bit different but it is a good reference. Alton Brown also does a good job with this if you can find his Good Eats episode about custard based ice cream. I did a cursory search on youtube and came up with the sorbet/granita/Philly style ice cream show which barely mentions overrun.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if I can be of more service to you.

Regards,
The ICF