Violet candy ice cream
Violet sweets that go in early, along with the stabiliser, so they dissolve as the mix heats. Floral, sweet, and the mauve of the tin everyone remembers.
It is one of the few recipes where the main ingredient is not added at the end. Being a hard-boiled sweet, it needs the whole heating run to dissolve; added on the way down it would stay in pieces.
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 sweets, at 40 °C and on the way UP, so they dissolve on the road to 85.
- ·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 light in the mouth: a good part of the sugar comes from the sweets themselves, so the base stays lean and free of excess fat. The floral violet perfume shows up at the finish, once the ice cream has melted.
All about this violet sweet ice cream
Violet sweets are cooked sugar and flavouring, and they go in generously. Since they bring the sweetness ready-made, the recipe adds only a pinch of sucrose and dextrose, and it still reaches its sweetness.
The base is a classic ice cream one — milk and cream — and it sits mid-band on fat and solids, at the usual serving temperature. Nothing striking: the interest is in the flavour, not the numbers.
And the timing is what sets this recipe apart from the other sweet-based ones. Here the sweets go in at 40 °C, with the stabiliser, and dissolve as the mixture climbs to 85. In the lollipop one, by contrast, the sweet is ground and goes in on the way down. Here there is no need to grind: the heat does the work.
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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