Cacaolat chocolate milk ice cream
The chocolate drink of childhood as an ice cream: mild cocoa, very milky, sweet without going too far. It tastes exactly like you remember.
Cacaolat brings its own sugar and its own cocoa. That is why the recipe cuts the sucrose right back and adds no cocoa at all: the drink already carries the flavour and much of the sweetness.
Ingredients
For 1 kgTick each ingredient as you get it ready.
Need to adjust the formula?
Step by step
9 steps · follow the order for the best result
Chef's notes
- ·The Cacaolat, split in two: part of it on the heat with the cream and the rest cold as you take it off.
- ·Do not skip the cold ageing: it hydrates proteins and stabiliser and clearly improves the texture.
- ·The serving temperature depends on your recipe: if you formulate to a softer PAC than your freezer (say -11 °C with the chest at -18 °C), temper it for 5–10 min before serving; if the PAC matches your freezer, it can be eaten straight out.
- ·Why formulate at -11 and not at -18 °C: even though your freezer sits at -18 °C, formulating at -11 makes the ice cream tastes better — at -18 it is so cold that the taste buds barely pick up the flavour and the fat is slow to melt in the mouth. And keeps better: ice cream formulated at -11 and kept at -18 has less free water, suffers less from Ostwald ripening (ice crystals joining and growing) and keeps its creaminess longer.
- ·Keep your own notes: write down the POD and PAC that work best with your machine.
The texture
spot on
Creamy and smooth, with no rough edges: the drink arrives with the cocoa and sugar already dissolved, so the mix stays fine and free of grain. The cream rounds it off and leaves that childhood note of cocoa and milk.
Everything about this Cacaolat ice cream
The whole point is not cooking the drink. Only the minimum is heated — a little of it with the cream — so the milk powder, sugars and stabiliser can dissolve. The rest goes in cold, the moment it comes off the heat.
That way the ice cream tastes of Cacaolat and not of cooked cocoa, which is what happens if you pasteurise the lot. The cream brings the fat the drink lacks: the recipe lands in the middle of the fat band.
The sugars split between sucrose, dextrose and 38 DE glucose, which gives body without raising the sweetness. With Cacaolat's own sugar, the whole thing reaches the sweetness it should.
The ingredients and what each does
Every ingredient has a technical job: cream brings fat and creaminess, milk powder raises the non-fat solids, the sugars set the sweetness and the freezing point, and the stabiliser controls crystal growth during storage.
Technique and controlling the numbers
Adjusting the POD (sweetening power) and the PAC (antifreezing power, given as a target temperature) lets you match sweetness and hardness to your taste and your machine. With the selectors in the side bar the formula recalculates itself and you will see how the amount of each ingredient changes.
Storage and common mistakes
Store at -18 °C in an airtight container and avoid freeze-thaw cycles. The commonest faults are not ageing it enough, too much sugar so it never freezes properly, and over-churning, which whips in too much air and wrecks the texture.
Recommended for this recipe
Equipment and ingredients that make the difference.
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Answers to your questions
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