Mantecado ice cream
Yolk and butter, mantecado as it has always been: yellow, dense and very rich. The ice cream of the fairground.
All the fat in the litre comes from two places and neither is cream: most of it from the butter and the rest from the yolks. The base is water and skimmed milk powder.
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 cinnamon goes in as sticks and the lemon peel whole: they come out when you strain, so nothing needs grating.
- ·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
Dense and spoonable, with the body yolks and butter give in place of cream. It tastes of cooked custard, melts slowly and coats the palate, just like the mantecado it takes its name from.
All about this mantecado ice cream
Mantecado takes its name from the butter, and here it is no garnish: it is the fat of the ice cream. That is why the base has neither milk nor cream, but water and skimmed milk powder, which supplies the protein and the solids without adding fat. That way you control exactly how much there is and of what kind.
The rest is done by the yolk — which gives body and emulsifies — and the usual aromatic trio: cinnamon stick, lemon peel and vanilla pod, which infuse in the pan and are strained out before churning. None of the three enters the calculation: they leave only their aroma.
And on top, two things assembled at serving that do not go into the mix: an orange sauce with pectin, made the day before, and a stracciatella of grated chocolate. It is also one of the cheapest we make.
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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