Banana Pudding Ice Cream

Anyone who has been to a real barbecue joint knows about banana pudding. It is perhaps the most ubiquitous dessert in the South. One taste of the fresh bananas, pudding, and vanilla wafers with a topping of whipped cream and you will understand why it is so popular. Mrs. Fellow has been in a banana mood for a while so I thought it best to indulge her with some ice cream. This is a very basic recipe. It is easy to make and straightforward to follow which is why it is the perfect recipe to introduce my new worksheet.

I will still list ingredients the way I always have, but the work sheet requires switching to grams. So everything you see on the worksheet is the equivalent weight of the amount in the recipe. For example, 2 cups of cream weighs 475 grams. While this may sound like it is about to get very complicated, fear not this is easy to follow.

Successful ice cream is all about balance between fats and sugar and solids and water. Fats and sugar combine to give not only taste, but texture. The right proportions also contribute to stability. Before we look at the chart, I must admit to you that I fudged the sugar content a bit. The final product was not sweet enough so I added in some sugar after cooking and I upped the sugar content (from 19% to 25%) of the bananas because they were extremely ripe. PLease forgive the awful chart. This was imported as a .jpg file and it didn't turn out as pretty as I would have liked. Click the picture to view a bigger version of the sheet in a new window.



My ice cream is 13.69% fat and 15.95% sugar, which is close enough to what it should be for things to work. At 13% milkfat, the ice cream should have 15.5% sugar. At 14% milkfat, the ice cream should have 16% sugar. Where this falls down a bit is in the milk solids (MSNF). A correct homemade ice cream should have between nine and ten percent MSNF. Mine is obviously too low. What does MNSF do and what does this mean?

MSNF absorbs water. Too much MSNF and the lactose will crystallize. Too little, as in my case, and the finished product may be icy. My recipe came out just a tiny bit icy. Without trying it I can’t be absolutely certain, but I think if you increase the whole milk to 575 grams (about 2 1/3 cups) and remove 80 grams of banana the MSNF will increase to 4.72% and the problem should go away without drastically changing the taste. I listed the changes in red.

I did not define the amount of vanilla wafers. In general add-ins like these are should be left to your discretion. Overall, this ice cream is really good. Mrs. Fellow recanted her complaint about the iciness when I threatened to dispose of the batch. She is much more sensitive to texture than most people. So if she can live with it, I know you will like it.


Banana Pudding Ice Cream

2 cups whole milk (2 1/3 cups)
2 cups cream
4 egg yolks
2/3 cup + 3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla flavor
1/8 teaspoon salt
5 bananas (4 to 4 ½ bananas)
Vanilla wafers

1. Pour the milk and cream and half of the sugar into a pot and bring to a slight simmer stirring occasionally.
2. As the milk and cream are heating, place the egg yolks into a bowl with the remaining sugar and salt. Beat until it is a pale, frothy liquid.
3. Once the milk/cream mixture is simmering, remove it from the heat and temper the egg mixture by adding a small amount of the hot milk/cream and stirring thoroughly. Repeat this process a couple of more times to ensure that the eggs have warmed up. You should use about 1/3 of a cup of hot cream mixture in total. 4. Then pour the complete egg mixture into the cream pot.
5. Return the pot to the heat and stir constantly until the custard reaches 175 degrees Fahrenheit.
6. Remove the pot from the heat. Strain into a bowl.
7. Mash the bananas. I used a potato masher, but you can do this in a blender, food processor, or food mill. Add the puree to the custard and stir well to incorporate. Also add the vanilla.
8. Cool the custard to room temperature and then refrigerate overnight. Be sure to cover by putting plastic wrap directly on the ice cream. It is the air that oxidizes the bananas, turning them brown.
9. Freeze in your ice cream machine. During the freezing process, break up the vanilla wafers into bite sized pieces and incorporate them into the ice cream during the last minute of the freeze process.

Lets get technical

If you didn't catch the comment from James you should read it. He asks about incorporating air into the ice cream. I won't reiterate my response, you can read his question and my response here.

After my response, we went back and forth for a while through e-mail. I learned that he is using 10% milkfat and 12% sugar. This really better defines why he is having problems. Here in the USA, 10% milkfat is the minimum amount allowed in a frozen product to have it called ice cream. It is at this level of fat content that manufacturers pump air into their product to improve texture. Also, 12% sugar is too low for 10% milkfat. He should have 14% sugar. That will help some, but will really help him is increasing the fat content to 14 or 15%.

From these conversations, I realized that this fellow is doing it wrong. I do not show you the breakdowns of contents of my ice cream for fat, MSNF (milk solids non-fat), sugar, and other solids. So I have developed a spreadsheet based on the format given by Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir in Frozen Desserts.

The banana ice cream recipe will be posted tomorrow. Starting with it, I will include a copy of this worksheet and a discussion of contributions of the various components to the overall flavor and texture of the finished product.

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.

Chocolate Ice Cream with Chocolate Chips and Blueberry-Port Wine Swirl

When I added this as a flavor for the survey I had no idea it would win. I honestly thought that some of the other flavors were more interesting. So I was taken by surprise when it won the poll. I didn’t have a clue on what to make. All I knew is that if I pureed the blueberries and mixed them into the chocolate, the resulting color would be less than appetizing.

Since this is chocolate blueberry and not the other way around, the base had to be chocolate. So I went dark. It seems that the anti-oxidant craze has caused enough of a stir that consumers demand darker chocolate. M&M Mars and Hershey have both introduced new versions of some of their best sellers using dark chocolate. So I thought I would too.

If you make a lot of ice cream, you know that most recipes for chocolate ask for Dutch processed cocoa powder. I have never had success using the powder. It requires a longer cook time in order to truly remove the powdery taste and texture. So I prefer to rough chop chocolate bars and melt them in the milk. Having made the jam first, it became obvious that the chocolate should be very rich. For the ice cream base I used a combination of Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet and Theo 84% bittersweet because I had them on hand. Truthfully I find the Ghirardelli to be semi-sweet even though it is labeled as bittersweet, but the Theo bar more than makes up for this. The chocolate chunks are El Rey Apatame 73.5% (purchased at Whole Foods as a bar cut from a larger slab) which I chopped myself. You can use chocolate chips or chunks interchangeably. Whatever you decide, make sure that the chunks are at least as bittersweet as the base to avoid losing the flavor.


The swirl was made by the same method as the jam for the peanut butter ice cream except I added some port wine. The recipe below works really well if you intend to make a jam for more than just the ice cream. Unfortunately, once incorporated into the ice cream, the port flavor is pretty much lost. Next time I make the jam, I will make it “ice cream friendly” as opposed to “eat by itself friendly” and increase the port to at least one cup. Incidentally, I underestimated the berry ripeness. The original recipe was for the juice of half of a lemon and did not call for salt, but after tasting the finished product I need to add some ingredients to balance the sweetness of the jam. You may or may not need to add as much sugar, lemon juice, and/or salt. Also, as you can see from the picture I used Costco's house brand 10 year aged Tawny Port. You will do better with a less generic port. I felt that it was thin, too tannic, and lacked concentration.

For the Swirl:

18 oz blueberries
2 c sugar (adjust for berry sweetness)
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
Pinch of salt (optional)
½ cup tawny port

1. Rinse the berries.
2. Put the berries, sugar, port, and lemon juice and lemon zest into a saucepan. Stir frequently until the sugar becomes liquid.
3. Simmer this stuff for about 30 minutes. The temperature should eventually get to more than 224o F.
4. Remove from the heat and cool.


For the Chocolate Ice Cream:

2 cups cream
2 cups milk
¾ cup sugar
6 egg yolks
½ tsp vanilla extract
7 oz bittersweet chocolate cut into chunks (for the base)
4 oz bittersweet chocolate cut into small chunks to add during freezing.

1. Combine the cream, milk, and ½ cup of the sugar in a saucepan and heat to a bare simmer stirring occasionally.
2. Combine the egg yolks with the remaining ¼ cup of sugar. Beat until the dry ingredients are fully incorporated and the mixture turns pale yellow.
3. Coarsely chop the chocolate.
4. Once the cream mixture is at ready, remove it from the heat.
5. Temper the eggs by mixing in a small amount of the cream, stir thoroughly, and repeat three times. You should use about 1/3 of a cup of hot cream mixture in total. Then pour the complete egg mixture into the cream pot.
6. Return the pot to the heat and stir constantly until the custard reaches 175 degrees Fahrenheit.
7. Remove the pot from the heat. And add the chocolate. Stir until the contents are completely melted. If you are having problems getting the chocolate to melt, you may return the pot to the heat very briefly.
8. Stir in the vanilla extract
9. Pour the custard through a sieve into a bowl and let cool to room temperature.
10. Cover the bowl and chill overnight.
11. The next day, freeze the custard in your ice cream machine. During the last minute of the freezing process, drop in spoonfuls of the jam and the chocolate chunks.

Update

Chocolate Blueberry won hands down. Look for the recipe later this week. As for those of you who have generously agreed to sacrifice your taste buds for the good of the team, an e-mail will be going out soon to discuss how we can meet.

If you haven't clicked over to Ice Cream Ireland, you really should. Here is a link to his recipe for Blue Cheese and Caramelized Shallot Ice Cream. I know sounds strange, but I would like to taste it. It makes me want to try out my recipe for Camembert Ice Cream.

A quick review -- Mrs. Fellow's favorite Ben and Jerry's flavor is Oatmeal Cookie Chunk, but she thinks they have changed the flavor. The cookies have a brighter citrus flavor than in the past. She still likes it, but may demote it from the number one spot. I wonder if there have been changes to other B&J flavors. Does anyone know?