Lemon frozen yoghurt
Tangy yoghurt and lemon, light and very fresh. The sort you want after a meal, when nothing heavy will do.
Yoghurt takes 40 °C without trouble because its protein has already coagulated during fermentation. Lemon juice is unforgiving: its acid on hot milk splits the mix in seconds.
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
- ·Zest with the sugar at 40 °C · yoghurt on the way down, at 40 °C · juice cold.
- ·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 very dense thanks to the condensed milk, which brings sugar and solids at once. The yoghurt provides the tang and the lemon sharpens it: one of those ice creams that cuts sweetness rather than adding to it.
All about this yoghurt and lemon ice cream
The base is built on condensed milk and very little milk. The condensed milk brings solids and a dairy sweetness that holds up the acidity of the other two leads: yoghurt and lemon juice.
With that, the ice cream stays in band on both fat and solids. The sweetness is kept high on purpose: between the yoghurt and the lemon there is a lot of acid, and acid eats perceived sweetness.
The aroma does not come from the juice, it comes from the zest of two lemons ground with the sucrose: the essential oil lives in the peel, and that is where the smell of lemon lives. That is why the mix is strained before churning, to keep the flavour and lose the fibre.
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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