Fig ice cream
Ripe figs: honey-sweet, seeds and all, with that almost caramelised base note. It tastes of late summer.
Under the fig's skin there is a white layer that is bitter and astringent. The recipe insists on removing it: it is the difference between a sweet fig ice cream and one that rasps the tongue.
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 figs, after ageing and thoroughly peeled, white layer included.
- ·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 dense, with cream outweighing milk so it can carry the fig's water. The seeds stay whole and crunch from spoonful to spoonful, and the ripe fruit's sweetness does nearly all the work.
All about this fig ice cream
The fig is one of the sweetest, most full-bodied fruits there is, and here it goes in generously. The base sits on its fat target, with a fair amount of cream, and reaches its solids.
The added sugars stay restrained — sucrose, dextrose and a pinch of fructose — because the fig brings its own; even so the whole reaches its sweetness, with the serving temperature in band. There is a lighter version.
The fruit goes in last, with the base already aged. It is one of the few of our ice creams that works this way, along with kiwi and pineapple: peeled fig oxidises fast and the less it waits, the better.
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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