Fresh cheese ice cream
Full-fat fresh cheese: lactic, mild and barely sweet. A simple ice cream that asks for fruit or honey alongside.
It has more than twice the protein of a cream ice cream. That is what gives it that almost chewable body, and also what forces you to watch the lactose: it lands just above our ceiling.
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 cheese, with the mix cold and blended thoroughly. It is neither heated nor blended hot.
- ·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
Very dense and substantial: there is so much fresh cheese that hardly any cream is needed, and its protein builds a firm, spoonable texture. The lactic acidity cuts through the sweetness and leaves a short, clean finish.
All about this fresh cheese ice cream
Fresh cheese is protein and water, and here it goes in on a grand scale. That sends the protein soaring, far above that of a cream ice cream, and it is what gives that dense body, almost frozen cheesecake.
Since the cheese already brings fat and a great deal of dry extract, the base is emptied out: barely any cream and some milk. The ice cream sits just right on fat but reaches the highest solids we make.
The cheese is added with the mix already at 4 °C. Heating it would split it: its protein coagulates with heat and acid, and instead of an ice cream you would have sweetened curds.
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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