Hi all,

I recently got a GE gel canister ice cream maker and I've had a few hits &
misses. I don't use any eggs in my ice cream recipes only cream, milk &
sugar. So far I've made chocolate ice cream twice and I don't like how it
turned out mostly because I don't know what type of chocolate to use. I did
find some Lindt Fine Dark Chocolate that is 85% cocao & it's 100 gr bar.
Can I use this in my next attempt? Or can you recommend something better.

Also what are some of your favorite ice cream recipes that you've created?
I'm looking to try something new.

Thanks a bunch & Take care,
SPOONS
My photo food log http://www.fotolog.net/giggles

SPOONS wrote:
Hi all,

Just remember, you asked for it.

I recently got a GE gel canister ice cream maker and I've had a few hits &
misses. I don't use any eggs in my ice cream recipes only cream, milk &
sugar. So far I've made chocolate ice cream twice and I don't like how it
turned out mostly because I don't know what type of chocolate to use. I did

I believe (from a faint memory of a television show
or three, not any actual experience churning the stuff
myself) that you need to start with a ganache rather than
chocolate. But then, chocolate ice cream is a ganache, so I
don't quite know why I'm making the distinction...

You'll probably have to try several brands of couverture
before you find one that tastes right, because the same kind
of chocolate tastes different when coming from different
chocolatiers...but maybe that's what you're asking...

find some Lindt Fine Dark Chocolate that is 85% cocao & it's 100 gr bar.
Can I use this in my next attempt? Or can you recommend something better.

No. Mail it here, packed with one of those frozen
gel-packs to prevent it from, uh, outgassing, yeah,
that's it. I'll dispose of it where it will never hurt
anyone again.

Also what are some of your favorite ice cream recipes that you've created?
I'm looking to try something new.

I invented this thing where you squeeze chocolate syrup out
of a bottle onto vanilla ice cream.

--Blair
"'A la mode', I called it."

Blair P. Houghton wrote in
:

SPOONS wrote:
Hi all,

Just remember, you asked for it.

I recently got a GE gel canister ice cream maker and I've had a few
hits & misses. I don't use any eggs in my ice cream recipes only
cream, milk & sugar. So far I've made chocolate ice cream twice and I
don't like how it turned out mostly because I don't know what type of
chocolate to use. I did

I believe (from a faint memory of a television show
or three, not any actual experience churning the stuff
myself) that you need to start with a ganache rather than
chocolate. But then, chocolate ice cream is a ganache, so I
don't quite know why I'm making the distinction...

You'll probably have to try several brands of couverture
before you find one that tastes right, because the same kind
of chocolate tastes different when coming from different
chocolatiers...but maybe that's what you're asking...

find some Lindt Fine Dark Chocolate that is 85% cocao & it's 100 gr
bar. Can I use this in my next attempt? Or can you recommend
something better.

No. Mail it here, packed with one of those frozen
gel-packs to prevent it from, uh, outgassing, yeah,
that's it. I'll dispose of it where it will never hurt
anyone again.

Also what are some of your favorite ice cream recipes that you've
created? I'm looking to try something new.

I invented this thing where you squeeze chocolate syrup out
of a bottle onto vanilla ice cream.

--Blair
"'A la mode', I called it."

Ah, one of life's great mysteries solved! I wondered you invented that.

--
Wayne in Phoenix

Big on natural foods?? 82.38% of people die of "natural" causes.

"SPOONS" wrote in message
ogers.com...

Also what are some of your favorite ice cream
recipes that you've created? I'm looking to try
something new.

Ben and Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream and Dessert Book is filled to
bursting with great recipes, as is the Ultimate Ice Cream Book (I have
and use both of them). They're available from amazon, packaged
together, for 21.15USD.

-j

"SPOONS" wrote in message . rogers.com...
Hi all,

I recently got a GE gel canister ice cream maker and I've had a few hits &
misses. I don't use any eggs in my ice cream recipes only cream, milk &
sugar. So far I've made chocolate ice cream twice and I don't like how it
turned out mostly because I don't know what type of chocolate to use. I did
find some Lindt Fine Dark Chocolate that is 85% cocao & it's 100 gr bar.
Can I use this in my next attempt? Or can you recommend something better.

Also what are some of your favorite ice cream recipes that you've created?
I'm looking to try something new.

Thanks a bunch & Take care,
SPOONS
My photo food log http://www.fotolog.net/giggles

I've used chocolate chips to pleasing effect. I might not be picky,
though.

The key, I found, was to heat the dairy and combine the ingredients in
a blender. Before that, I got a grainy mess. After that, I was
amazed at how much better and smoother my chocolate ice cream was than
other types. The cocoa butter is a great stabilizer for philly ice
cream.

Coconut ice cream is another great treat. I've only tried recipes
that involve adding a can of coconut cream (the canned, sweetened
product used to make pina collada [sorry, no tilde]) to your dairy.

Check out the Good Eat's fan page for a transcript of Alton Brown's
show on Ice Cream. Interesting, informative stuff.

http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/GEFP/index.htm

One other thing to take note of; there's a neat trick where you melt
chocolate and add, I think, some oil. You drizzle this molten
chocolate in towards the end of the freezing cycle to get micro-chips
of chocolate. This is how most commercial chocolate chip ice cream is
made. One place for the details is
Nick Malgieri's chocolate book:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...books&n=507846

Greg Zywicki

at Tue, 08 Jun 2004 20:05:17 GMT in
s.com,
(SPOONS) wrote :

Hi all,

I recently got a GE gel canister ice cream maker and I've had a few hits
& misses. I don't use any eggs in my ice cream recipes only cream, milk
& sugar. So far I've made chocolate ice cream twice and I don't like
how it turned out mostly because I don't know what type of chocolate to
use.

How was it disappointing, relative to what you were expecting?

I did find some Lindt Fine Dark Chocolate that is 85% cocao & it's
100 gr bar. Can I use this in my next attempt?

I recommend simply *eating* it instead because Lindt's 85% is the best 85%
chocolate on the market and one of the very best chocolates for eating
straight you can find. As for using it in ice cream, it may not be as ideal
as you would like because of a high cocoa butter content. This creates
difficulties with texture - the chocolate doesn't emulsify completely
and/or the result is excessively dense and greasy.

Or can you recommend
something better.

El Rey Gran Saman 70%. This chocolate has a low cocoa butter content and in
addition a particularly intense flavour, which you want for ice cream where
the effects of dilution with ingredients that tend to mute the chocolate
flavour and of chilling which mutes the taste still further mandates a very
powerful chocolate.

Chocolate chips also work well because they're formulated specifically with
low cocoa butter. Here the one you should use is Ghirardelli Double
Chocolate because, again, it's got far more intensity of flavour than other
chocolate chips.

Methodologically, you'll find that the most foolproof method is to grate
the chocolate finely (using a box grater), make a custard (it should really
only need be eggs, cream, and milk, and pour the hot custard over the
grated chocolate. You'll need the eggs, btw, to cut the fat content down to
a proper amount (using a higher proportion of milk won't work because of
the aforementioned emulsification problems). Eggs stabilise and emulsify
the mixture.

Also what are some of your favorite ice cream recipes that you've
created? I'm looking to try something new.

Take a look at both the rose ice cream and the chocolate ice cream recipes
I posted on the NG before. If you can't find them in DejaNews, I'll repost.


--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

(Alex Rast) wrote in message ...
my next attempt?

I recommend simply *eating* it instead because Lindt's 85% is the best 85%
chocolate on the market and one of the very best chocolates for eating
straight you can find. As for using it in ice cream, it may not be as ideal
as you would like because of a high cocoa butter content. This creates
difficulties with texture - the chocolate doesn't emulsify completely
and/or the result is excessively dense and greasy.


What is your opinion on eggless Ice Creams? I can see the blender
technique I mentioned being a problem with a custard base (although
I'm not exactly sure why it would be.)

Glad to see that my use of chocolate chips is indicated by more than
just frugallity.

Greg Zywicki

Although I used the Ghi. Semisweet. Not as good, but you can get a
great big bag at cost plus.

I need to try milk and white chocolates too. I expect the white to
give a nice texture without changing the flavor. The milk is
indicated for "french silk" types.

at Tue, 15 Jun 2004 13:56:58 GMT in
,
(Greg Zywicki) wrote :

(Alex Rast) wrote in message
.. . my next attempt?

I recommend simply *eating* it instead because Lindt's 85% is the best
85% chocolate on the market and one of the very best chocolates for
eating straight you can find. As for using it in ice cream, it may not
be as ideal as you would like because of a high cocoa butter content.
This creates difficulties with texture - the chocolate doesn't
emulsify completely and/or the result is excessively dense and greasy.


What is your opinion on eggless Ice Creams? I can see the blender
technique I mentioned being a problem with a custard base (although
I'm not exactly sure why it would be.)

Some ice creams (such as the rose ice cream I alluded to) *must* be
eggless. Personally, I also think most fruit ice creams are a little better
eggless, as long as you have enough fruit concentration (you don't need the
eggs to cut down the fat, and you don't need to stabilise other
ingredients). Other ice creams *must* have eggs, especially nut flavours
where otherwise it's going to be too oily for any real flavour intensity.
Flavours like vanilla are in the middle. I personally prefer the custard-
base vanilla (often called French Vanilla), but I also like the cream-base
vanilla (Philadelphia style, IIRC). The one mandatory in either case is
that you must use vanilla beans, and hence any good vanilla ice cream
*must* have black specks in it.

Generally speaking, using eggs works best if your primary flavouring
ingredient has a lot of fat, and not using eggs works best if you've got a
low-fat flavouring whose flavour tends to clash with that of eggs. Strong,
spicy flavours such as coffee and cinnamon seem to me to be slightly better
with eggs, but the difference isn't enormous.

Glad to see that my use of chocolate chips is indicated by more than
just frugallity.

Indeed - this is one application where chocolate chips really do work
better than most bar chocolate. However, don't fool yourself into believing
it's any cheaper. I find that it's typically about the same price.

Although I used the Ghi. Semisweet. Not as good, but you can get a
great big bag at cost plus.

You can (or could) also get a great big bag of the Double Chocolate chips
at Cost Plus, however. In Cost Plusses in Seattle, however, the Double
Chocolate Chips sold out fast (needless to say...). They may be back in
stock now. You need to keep checking because they sell out almost as fast
as Cost Plus can bring them in.

I need to try milk and white chocolates too. I expect the white to
give a nice texture without changing the flavor.

White chocolate is almost always disappointing in ice cream because the end
result is usually a somewhat fudgier type of texture (not really all that
appealing) with a flavour that's like a mild vanilla. Very bland. Never use
white chocolate chips with ice cream, btw, because they're not pure white
chocolate - instead, they're invariably mixed with vegetable shortening
(unless, of course, the idea of adding a dollop of Crisco to your ice cream
is appealing to you). If you want to experiment with white chocolate, use
El Rey Icoa and forget about all other brands. El Rey's Icoa is
indisputably the best of the white chocolates, in a class by itself, the
only one I'd consider using for any white chocolate application.

The milk is
indicated for "french silk" types.

That's not what it actually produces : what milk chocolate makes is a very
mild ice cream. You can use milk chocolate, at least if it's a good type,
although the ice cream thus produced will be more "easy to eat" than
intense and indulgent. Milk chocolate ice cream, however, is great if you
want to combine it with another flavour component and you don't want the
chocolate to overwhelm completely. If you want, for instance, a chocolate
ice cream with almonds in it, milk chocolate is a better choice. Same thing
for chocolate with a caramel swirl.

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

(Alex Rast) wrote in message ...
at Tue, 15 Jun 2004 13:56:58 GMT in
,
(Greg Zywicki) wrote :
What is your opinion on eggless Ice Creams? I can see the blender
technique I mentioned being a problem with a custard base (although
I'm not exactly sure why it would be.)

Some ice creams (such as the rose ice cream I alluded to) *must* be
eggless. Personally, I also think most fruit ice creams are a little better
eggless, as long as you have enough fruit concentration (you don't need the
eggs to cut down the fat, and you don't need to stabilise other
ingredients).

Not to mention, you don't have to heat the base, so you're not at risk
of destroying the essential oils and volatile compounds of fresh
fruit.

I need to try milk and white chocolates too. I expect the white to
give a nice texture without changing the flavor.

White chocolate is almost always disappointing in ice cream because the end
result is usually a somewhat fudgier type of texture (not really all that
appealing) with a flavour that's like a mild vanilla. Very bland.

I like the texture of philly style with chocolate chips. Perhaps it's
that fudgy texture, but I like it.

If I do try white chocolate, it won't be used as the prime flavor,
just as texture enhancer.

I've honestly been dissapointed with the few custard based ice creams
I've made.


Milk chocolate ice cream, however, is great if you
want to combine it with another flavour component and you don't want the
chocolate to overwhelm completely. If you want, for instance, a chocolate
ice cream with almonds in it, milk chocolate is a better choice. Same thing
for chocolate with a caramel swirl.

That's the sort of thing I haven't tried yet. Good thoughts.

Greg Zywicki

Alex Rast wrote:

Some ice creams (such as the rose ice cream I alluded to) *must* be
eggless.

Why?????

Personally, I also think most fruit ice creams are a little better
eggless, as long as you have enough fruit concentration (you don't need the
eggs to cut down the fat, and you don't need to stabilise other
ingredients).

Personally, I think the only way to make ice cream
is the cooked custard method - that is, with eggs!
Why do you say eggs are needed to cut down the fat?
That makes no sense since without eggs there is much
less fat. Lots of fat is what make good texture in
ice cream and eggs make for richness of flavor. I
mostly make fruit ice creams - my two favorites are
peach and strawberry, but I also have made many other
fruit flavors. If anything, fruit ice creams need
eggs more than others because the fruit adds a lot of
water and that needs to be offset by a richer base. IMNSHO
Otherwise you would have a more watery ice cream that
would tend to have a less smooth texture, more ice
crystals in it.

Other ice creams *must* have eggs, especially nut flavours
where otherwise it's going to be too oily for any real flavour intensity.

Again, this seems to be the opposite of common sense.
Besides, aren't the nuts generally in large pieces and
not pureed into the ice cream? How much effect could
their oils have if that is the case?

Flavours like vanilla are in the middle. I personally prefer the custard-
base vanilla (often called French Vanilla), but I also like the cream-base
vanilla (Philadelphia style, IIRC). The one mandatory in either case is
that you must use vanilla beans, and hence any good vanilla ice cream
*must* have black specks in it.

That's ridiculous. Sure it would be better with real
vanilla beans but you can make perfectly good vanilla ice
cream with real vanilla extract.

Generally speaking, using eggs works best if your primary flavouring
ingredient has a lot of fat, and not using eggs works best if you've got a
low-fat flavouring whose flavour tends to clash with that of eggs.

Well, that's just your opinion that the flavors clash. I
haven't noticed any flavor clashing in any ice cream I have
made and I always use eggs.

Kate

--
Kate Connally
“If I were as old as I feel, I’d be dead already.”
Goldfish: “The wholesome snack that smiles back,
Until you bite their heads off.”
What if the hokey pokey really *is* what it's all about?

Greg Zywicki wrote:

(Alex Rast) wrote in message ...
at Tue, 15 Jun 2004 13:56:58 GMT in
,
(Greg Zywicki) wrote :
What is your opinion on eggless Ice Creams? I can see the blender
technique I mentioned being a problem with a custard base (although
I'm not exactly sure why it would be.)

Some ice creams (such as the rose ice cream I alluded to) *must* be
eggless. Personally, I also think most fruit ice creams are a little better
eggless, as long as you have enough fruit concentration (you don't need the
eggs to cut down the fat, and you don't need to stabilise other
ingredients).

Not to mention, you don't have to heat the base, so you're not at risk
of destroying the essential oils and volatile compounds of fresh
fruit.

Uh, you don't heat the fruit! You cook the custard and
then chill it and then add the fruit!

Kate

--
Kate Connally
“If I were as old as I feel, I’d be dead already.”
Goldfish: “The wholesome snack that smiles back,
Until you bite their heads off.”
What if the hokey pokey really *is* what it's all about?

On 16 Jun 2004 11:45:05 -0700, (Greg Zywicki)
wrote:


I've honestly been dissapointed with the few custard based ice creams
I've made.

May I ask what you didn't care for? Was it texture, mouth feel,
intensity of flavor, etc?

I have found that many custard base recipes need a bit of tweaking for
flavorings. I have a tendency to increase the flavorings quite a bit
to get serious taste bud action going on. This goes not just for such
things as vanilla, but also for the amount of chocolate or coffee or
other ingredients that add to the flavor enhancement.

What you use to freeze the ice cream can also affect the final
outcome. I tend to prefer "real" ice cream churns (either ice & salt
bucket or of the Il Gelato, refrigerated sort) to get good and
consistent creamy texture.

Boron

at Wed, 16 Jun 2004 19:27:23 GMT in ,
(Kate Connally) wrote :

Alex Rast wrote:

Some ice creams (such as the rose ice cream I alluded to) *must* be
eggless.

Why?????

Rosewater and custard have very clashing flavours. Furthermore, rose ice
cream comes from the Middle East, and the type of ice cream being made
there is a condensed-milk base variety which never uses eggs. So there's
both tradition and taste involved.

Personally, I also think most fruit ice creams are a little better
eggless, as long as you have enough fruit concentration (you don't
need the eggs to cut down the fat, and you don't need to stabilise
other ingredients).

Personally, I think the only way to make ice cream
is the cooked custard method - that is, with eggs!
Why do you say eggs are needed to cut down the fat?
That makes no sense since without eggs there is much
less fat. Lots of fat is what make good texture in
ice cream and eggs make for richness of flavor.

I disagree: IMHO there's a balance of fat, hovering about 10-12%, that
makes for an ideal texture. Too much fat and the ice cream becomes leaden,
brick-solid, and greasy - the texture of Haagen-Dasz, which IMHO has one of
the worst textures of any ice cream. It seems to be a product of
marketroid-oriented thinking - that more is better, or at least that more
extreme is better, so that if some fat is good, more must be better, and if
less air is good, very little if any must be better. Hence you get the
Haagen-Dasz block - ice cream you have to chisel out. It only stands to
reason. If you remove all the air and increase the fat to its logical limit
- 100% - what you'll have is frozen butter. Not exactly the most appealing
thing. Thus clearly there is some optimum ratio. Most people concede, once
they've tried a good Italian ice cream, that the texture there is far
better, and Italian ice creams tend towards about 10% fat and somewhere in
the range of 25-35% air, where H-D is about 20% fat and 14% air. A
commercial ice cream is usually about 15% fat and 50% air.

I
mostly make fruit ice creams - my two favorites are
peach and strawberry, but I also have made many other
fruit flavors. If anything, fruit ice creams need
eggs more than others because the fruit adds a lot of
water and that needs to be offset by a richer base.

If you use a highly fatty substance like chocolate (about 40% fat, in
general), or nuts (anywhere from 60-90% fat, that's going to tilt the fat
content sky-high, so you want to add eggs to reduce the fat down into a
more appropriate proportion. But with fruit (near 0% fat), you want to
*increase* the fat content, if you want a decent percentage of fruit (I
like around 50% fruit), and so eggs fight this tendency: instead, you need
to use more cream proportionately to milk. This also makes the base richer
as you hint at.

....

Other ice creams *must* have eggs, especially nut flavours
where otherwise it's going to be too oily for any real flavour
intensity.

Again, this seems to be the opposite of common sense.
Besides, aren't the nuts generally in large pieces and
not pureed into the ice cream?

If you were only making ice creams that were a generic "base" (usually
vanilla) into which nuts were added in large pieces, then you could get
away with using no eggs. But that's not a nut-flavoured ice cream, that's a
vanilla ice cream with nuts in it. Thus I might refer to it as "vanilla
almond" or "vanilla pistachio". It's typical in the classic nut ice creams
(hazelnut, pistachio, peanut, etc.) to puree them into the ice cream. You
make a nut butter with the nut you're using, then add it to the custard.
That way the flavour is through and through, not just a nut "condiment" to
an otherwise vanilla ice cream.

Flavours like vanilla are in the middle. I personally prefer the
custard- base vanilla (often called French Vanilla), but I also like
the cream-base vanilla (Philadelphia style, IIRC). The one mandatory
in either case is that you must use vanilla beans, and hence any good
vanilla ice cream *must* have black specks in it.

That's ridiculous. Sure it would be better with real
vanilla beans but you can make perfectly good vanilla ice
cream with real vanilla extract.

You might be able to make vanilla ice cream with some vanilla flavour using
extract, but the taste with real vanilla beans is so much more intense and
so much better that there's no excuse not to use a vanilla bean. Thus the
only reason not to use vanilla beans at home is if you forgot to buy one on
an occasion when you had planned on making vanilla ice cream. Perhaps also
we have different ideas of "good". My idea of "good" is that it's that
level where the relative difference in quality between the "good" and the
best you could ever do isn't a major, noticeable step.

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

Boron Elgar wrote in message . ..
On 16 Jun 2004 11:45:05 -0700, (Greg Zywicki)
wrote:


I've honestly been dissapointed with the few custard based ice creams
I've made.

May I ask what you didn't care for? Was it texture, mouth feel,
intensity of flavor, etc?


It's been a while, but if I remember correctly it was that it was just
too custardy. The texture and flavor where richer and eggier than I
liked. They
didn't seem "cold" enough, which i suppose indicates mouthfeel or
texture.

I use a Cuisinart machine.

Looking at it written down, I could probably just back off on either
the amount of egg or butterfat in the base to adjust the texture to my
liking. But philildelphia style is so much easier, and so satisfying
to me, that it hasn't seemed worth the effort. I might consider it,
though, because Alex's suggestion of egg going better with oil-based
flavors like nuts, does make sense. The egg yolk probably does do a
good job of emulsifying the essential oils, and those oils do hold up
well to heat (nuts do well with some toasting, for example.) Also,
the texture is probably more compatible with frozen nuts.

Greg Zywicki

Alex Rast wrote:

at Wed, 16 Jun 2004 19:27:23 GMT in ,
(Kate Connally) wrote :

Alex Rast wrote:

Some ice creams (such as the rose ice cream I alluded to) *must* be
eggless.

Why?????

Rosewater and custard have very clashing flavours. Furthermore, rose ice
cream comes from the Middle East, and the type of ice cream being made
there is a condensed-milk base variety which never uses eggs. So there's
both tradition and taste involved.

If I were making a "traditional" Middle Eastern dish
then I would do it the way that they do. However, there
is no reason not to make a rose flavored custard-based
ice cream on your own. I can't see why the flavors would
clash. However, I don't think I would like rose ice
cream of any sort. I use rose water in various Middle
Eastern and North African dishes that I make but I don't
think I would care for it as the only major flavor in
something. So I guess I'll never know since I'm not going
to go to the trouble of making rose flavored, custard-
based ice cream just to find out. But in my mind I can
imagine the flavors together and it seems to me they
would go together find, assuming you like the rose flavor
in the first place.

Personally, I also think most fruit ice creams are a little better
eggless, as long as you have enough fruit concentration (you don't
need the eggs to cut down the fat, and you don't need to stabilise
other ingredients).

Personally, I think the only way to make ice cream
is the cooked custard method - that is, with eggs!
Why do you say eggs are needed to cut down the fat?
That makes no sense since without eggs there is much
less fat. Lots of fat is what make good texture in
ice cream and eggs make for richness of flavor.

I disagree: IMHO there's a balance of fat, hovering about 10-12%, that
makes for an ideal texture. Too much fat and the ice cream becomes leaden,
brick-solid, and greasy - the texture of Haagen-Dasz, which IMHO has one of
the worst textures of any ice cream.

IMNSHO Haagen Dasz has the perfect texture of any ice cream
and all without resorting to weird additives - just milk,
cream, egg, and whatever (strawberry has always been my
favorite - it tastes exactly like my grandmother's homemade
ice cream except the texture is better.

It seems to be a product of
marketroid-oriented thinking - that more is better, or at least that more
extreme is better, so that if some fat is good, more must be better, and if
less air is good, very little if any must be better.

I totally disagree. The fat is what gives the mouth feel.
More fat gives a smoother, creamier, more sensuous mouth
feel. It didn't take any marketing people to come up with
that. I've known that is *way* before Haagen Dasz existed,
having been a connoisseur of ice cream my whole life. I
never much cared for "store-bought" ice creams until Haagen
Dasz came around, mainly for their lack of a decent mouth
feel in spite of all the texturizing additives like carageenan
and guar gum and others of that ilk.

Hence you get the
Haagen-Dasz block - ice cream you have to chisel out. It only stands to
reason.

Why would you have to chisel it out? If it's kept at the
proper temperature for ice cream it shouldn't be too hard.
But given that most home refrigerator freezers are not
set for proper ice cream temp all you have to do is zap
it in the microwave for 15-20 seconds and it becomes
perfectly scoopable and the correct "hardness" for eating
and enjoying the maximum flavor.

If you remove all the air and increase the fat to its logical limit
- 100% - what you'll have is frozen butter. Not exactly the most appealing
thing.

No one ever suggested doing anything even remotely
like that. And besides there are other components to
ice cream besides air and fat. Now you're just being
ridiculous.

Thus clearly there is some optimum ratio. Most people concede, once
they've tried a good Italian ice cream, that the texture there is far
better, and Italian ice creams tend towards about 10% fat and somewhere in
the range of 25-35% air, where H-D is about 20% fat and 14% air. A
commercial ice cream is usually about 15% fat and 50% air.

I've had some excellent gelatos. Don't know or care
what the fat to air ratio is. But I still say Haagen
Dasz has the perfect texture. Again - don't know or
care about the fat/air ratio. But whatever it is they
do works for me. In my experience more fat is better,
within, of course, reason.

I
mostly make fruit ice creams - my two favorites are
peach and strawberry, but I also have made many other
fruit flavors. If anything, fruit ice creams need
eggs more than others because the fruit adds a lot of
water and that needs to be offset by a richer base.

If you use a highly fatty substance like chocolate (about 40% fat, in
general), or nuts (anywhere from 60-90% fat, that's going to tilt the fat
content sky-high, so you want to add eggs to reduce the fat down into a
more appropriate proportion. But with fruit (near 0% fat), you want to
*increase* the fat content, if you want a decent percentage of fruit (I
like around 50% fruit), and so eggs fight this tendency: instead, you need
to use more cream proportionately to milk. This also makes the base richer
as you hint at.

...

Other ice creams *must* have eggs, especially nut flavours
where otherwise it's going to be too oily for any real flavour
intensity.

Again, this seems to be the opposite of common sense.
Besides, aren't the nuts generally in large pieces and
not pureed into the ice cream?

If you were only making ice creams that were a generic "base" (usually
vanilla) into which nuts were added in large pieces, then you could get
away with using no eggs. But that's not a nut-flavoured ice cream, that's a
vanilla ice cream with nuts in it. Thus I might refer to it as "vanilla
almond" or "vanilla pistachio". It's typical in the classic nut ice creams
(hazelnut, pistachio, peanut, etc.) to puree them into the ice cream. You
make a nut butter with the nut you're using, then add it to the custard.
That way the flavour is through and through, not just a nut "condiment" to
an otherwise vanilla ice cream.

Again, I reiterate that your logic seems backward to me.
If you're making a nut butter and adding it to the base,
then using eggs makes it contain even more fat and you've
just finished preaching against too much fat??? It would
seem to me that if you're trying to keep total fat at
certain level then you would use an eggless base for nuts
and chocolate since they bring a lot of fat to the mix.

Flavours like vanilla are in the middle. I personally prefer the
custard- base vanilla (often called French Vanilla), but I also like
the cream-base vanilla (Philadelphia style, IIRC). The one mandatory
in either case is that you must use vanilla beans, and hence any good
vanilla ice cream *must* have black specks in it.

That's ridiculous. Sure it would be better with real
vanilla beans but you can make perfectly good vanilla ice
cream with real vanilla extract.

You might be able to make vanilla ice cream with some vanilla flavour using
extract, but the taste with real vanilla beans is so much more intense and
so much better that there's no excuse not to use a vanilla bean.

Yeah, if you want to mortgage your house to buy a vanilla bean.
Do you know how much those things cost???? Yikes!!!!!

Thus the
only reason not to use vanilla beans at home is if you forgot to buy one on
an occasion when you had planned on making vanilla ice cream. Perhaps also
we have different ideas of "good". My idea of "good" is that it's that
level where the relative difference in quality between the "good" and the
best you could ever do isn't a major, noticeable step.

:-P Sorry, I guess my totally unsophisticated taste buds
just don't measure up. After I'm one of those low class
slobs who don't like caviar and truffles. So I guess it's
to be expected that I would be perfectly happy using vanilla
extract in my overly fat-laden, eggy ice cream. Sheesh!

Kate

--
Kate Connally
“If I were as old as I feel, I’d be dead already.”
Goldfish: “The wholesome snack that smiles back,
Until you bite their heads off.”
What if the hokey pokey really *is* what it's all about?