Sweet cream ice cream
Cream is the gelateria's benchmark: no flavour hides anything, so you see the ice cream's skeleton. There are two versions, one that tastes of real cream and one for everyday.
Both versions have the same solids and the same sweetness, but the richer one needs considerably less sugar to get there. The fat makes up that difference.
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 cream has to be whipping cream, 35 % fat. With single cream the numbers do not work.
- ·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 clean, properly spoonable: it is the highest-cream recipe in the whole collection and you feel it in how it coats the palate. No added flavour hides it, so what is here is well-balanced dairy fat and cold.
All about cream ice cream
A cream ice cream has no ingredient to hide behind: milk, cream, milk powder, sugars and stabiliser. If the balance is off, you notice on the first spoonful. That is why it is the recipe you learn on, and why there are two here: so you can choose how much of the spotlight the cream gets.
Both aim at the same place: the same solids and the same sweetness, which means the same firmness at serving. What changes is where those solids come from. The fattier one is loaded with cream and short on sugar: it is the one that tastes of cream, the one that lingers. The lighter one drops the cream and has to raise the sugar to reach the same solids; it comes out looser, a touch sweeter and lower in calories.
Fat also gives structure: that is why the lighter one needs a little more stabiliser. It is not an oversight, it is the right dose for each case.
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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Answers to your questions
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