Leche merengada ice cream
Milk, cinnamon and lemon: the classic drink turned into ice cream. Mild, very milky, with the cinnamon out in front.
The cinnamon is not cooked: it sits 3 days or more in cold water, in an airtight jar. Cold infusion draws out the aroma without the bitterness that appears when you boil the stick.
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
- ·Cinnamon water infused 3 days cold · zest ground with the sugar, at 40 °C.
- ·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 light at once, because the air comes from churning rather than from egg white as in the drink, which leaves it airier than an ordinary milk ice cream. The cinnamon and lemon sit on top, strongly marked.
Everything about this leche merengada ice cream
The prep step is what makes this recipe: water with cinnamon sticks broken by hand, in an airtight jar, at least 3 days in the fridge. Out of that comes the cinnamon water that goes into the mix.
The lemon comes in from the other side: the zest — the yellow only — ground in the processor with the recipe's sucrose. That way the essential oil spreads through the whole mix.
The base is a classic ice cream one, with milk and cream: on its fat target, on its solids, with the sweetness and serving temperature where they belong. Nothing showy: here all the interest is in the two aromas.
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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