Ice cream
recipes

It is almost always a matter of sugars. Sugar is what stops the water freezing solid: if you fall short, the ice cream turns into a block. Our pages give you the PAC of each recipe, which is exactly that measure. The other reason is the home freezer, which runs at −18 °C when ice cream is served at between −12 and −10 °C: take the tub out 10 minutes beforehand.

No, but it shows. Without a machine you have to take the mix out of the freezer every 30 minutes and beat it, four or five times, to break the crystals as they form. With a compressor machine it comes out better and without watching over it. In each recipe you can choose the method and the formula readjusts itself.

Ideally 24 hours in the fridge, at 4 °C, and it is best not to go beyond 72. That rest hydrates the proteins and the stabiliser, and it is what gives body and makes the ice cream hold up better in the freezer. You can skip it, but the result drops a notch.

Because the free water has had time to join together. It happens if the mix freezes slowly, if it is not churned enough or if the ice cream goes through ups and downs in temperature, for example from opening the freezer a lot. Keep it in an airtight container and at the back, not in the door.

Between −12 and −10 °C. Colder and you cannot taste the flavour and the spoon will not go in; warmer and it melts before it reaches the table.

It does not go off: at −18 °C nothing grows. What is lost over time is the texture, and that depends less on the days than on the swing in temperature: every time the freezer starts and stops, the ice cream takes a step towards crystals. Well covered and in a stable freezer it keeps in perfect condition for months; in one that is opened all the time you will notice it much sooner.

Yes, and most of our recipes do without it. The yolk brings fat and emulsion, but cream, milk powder and the stabiliser do exactly the same, with the advantage that you do not have to pasteurise at 85 °C or drag along a custard flavour.

Because sweetness and freezing point go together and cannot be separated by eye: if you simply lower the sugar, the ice cream hardens. What you have to do is swap some sugars for others. On each page you can set the POD you want and the formula recalculates itself while keeping the hardness.