Hazelnut ice cream
Toasted hazelnut as a paste: rich, intense and very long on the palate. The most indulgent of the nuts.
Hazelnut is not milled: it is ground until it releases its own oil and becomes paste. That oil carries the flavour, which is why the grinder needs breaks so it does not separate.
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 hazelnut paste, as the cooldown begins, and blend it in thoroughly.
- ·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 slow-melting, with the richness only nut paste gives. The hazelnut's fat coats the palate while the milk holds it up behind, without cream's heaviness. The roast fills the mouth and the salt lengthens it.
All about this hazelnut ice cream
There is only one flavour and the whole recipe serves it: pure hazelnut paste, with no added sugar or oils. The base is milk with a little water and milk powder, no cream: the fat comes from the hazelnut, and the ice cream lands on target.
The sugar is handled with dextrose and sucrose up to the target sweetness, and the serving temperature sits a little below band: it comes out creamy and soft. There is a pinch of salt, which with nuts does a great deal.
The paste goes in as the cooldown begins and is blended thoroughly, using the residual heat so it disperses effortlessly.
The hazelnuts are toasted at 180 °C and ground until they release their own oil: that is where the paste becomes paste and stops being powder.
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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