Mascarpone and raspberry ice cream
Rich, mild mascarpone against sharp raspberry. Genuinely creamy, and the fruit cuts it just in time.
It contains not a gram of cream. The mascarpone plays that role: it is a very high-fat cheese, so it brings the creaminess and the flavour as well.
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
- ·Mascarpone at 40 °C on the way down · strained raspberries with the mix already 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
Very creamy and dense, the mascarpone acting as cream and cheese at once: it brings the fat and that dairy richness that coats the palate. The raspberry's acidity cuts it precisely as it starts to fill.
All about this mascarpone and raspberry ice cream
The base is milk and little else, because all the fat comes from the mascarpone. The ice cream plants itself high in fat and well supplied with solids.
The raspberries go in as strained purée, and there is the detail: you strain first and weigh afterwards, because between seeds and residue you lose a fair part. With this much sharp fruit, the sweetness climbs: sucrose leads, with dextrose behind.
The timings cannot be swapped. The mascarpone at 40 °C on the way down, where it breaks down with the blender without trouble. The raspberry, with the mix already cold: it is very acidic and on hot dairy there is a risk it splits the mixture.
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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