Marshmallow ice cream
Marshmallows inside the ice cream: sweet, soft and with that sweet-shop vanilla. Pure corner shop.
A marshmallow is sugar, glucose syrup and gelatine whipped with air. That is why the recipe adds barely any sucrose: the sweetness is already there, and even so it runs high.
Ingredients
For 1 kgTick each ingredient as you get it ready.
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Step by step
9 steps · follow the order for the best result
Chef's notes
- ·The marshmallows, once the mix drops below 40 °C, then blend until worked in.
- ·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 very sweet, with the springiness marshmallows leave behind: their gelatine dissolves into the mix and gives a slightly chewy body unlike any other ice cream's. And the sugar comes mostly from them.
All about this marshmallow ice cream
Marshmallows are almost pure sugar, so the recipe adds barely any sucrose and little dextrose. Even so the sweetness goes above band: this is a deliberately sweet ice cream, and there is no way to lower it without taking marshmallows out.
The solids climb high and the fat stays on target. The serving temperature is among the highest: it comes out firm, because the marshmallow's sugar comes with gelatine, which gives body but does not lower the freezing point.
The marshmallows go in on the way down, below 40 °C, and are worked in with the blender. They dissolve completely: no pieces remain.
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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