Coconut ice cream
Coconut twice over, as purée and desiccated: tropical, rich and fibrous. One of the most aromatic we make.
It has barely any cream. It does not need more: between the purée and the desiccated, coconut supplies most of the fat, and it is vegetable fat, which feels different in the mouth.
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 purée with the cold mix; the desiccated coconut after ageing. Do not combine them in one step.
- ·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 with the grain of the desiccated always present: the coconut does not dissolve, it stays whole and shows in every spoonful. The base carries little cream, so it is the coconut's own fat that rounds it.
All about this coconut ice cream
Coconut is one of the flavours heat damages most: it loses its perfume and leaves a base note of toasted coconut from industrial baking. That is why the coconut purée never sees the pan: it is added once the mix is already cold, after pasteurising and chilling.
The desiccated coconut goes in at a different moment altogether: after ageing, blend and straight into the churn. That way it hydrates during churning without dissolving, leaving the grain you feel as you chew.
Between the purée and the desiccated, the coconut already supplies nearly all the fat, so the cream runs very short. Even so the ice cream ends up high in fat, among the highest we make, because coconut fat comes with the flavour built in.
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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