Ice Cream Recipes & Theory

Once you get an idea of what the basic ice cream custard consists of you can vary the flavouring ingredient to make any ice cream that you want since it’s all pretty much the same. The ice cream custard I normally use is an adaptation from one of Morimoto’s ice cream recipes.

Custard Ingredients for about 1L of ice cream:

4 egg yolks
2 cup regular milk (2%)
1 cup heavy cream (whipping cream)
3/4 to 1 cup sugar depending flavouring ingredients used

Flavouring:

The flavouring ingredients can be broken down into 2 categories, wet and dry. For the dry stuff like macha (green tea) powder, you’ll want to steep it in the milk while you’re heating up the milk so that the milk can be infused with the flavours. For wet ingredients such as vanilla extract or fruit juices, you’ll want to combine it with the custard once the custard is chilled since heating certain flavouring ingredients can cause it to loose some of the nice flavours and aromas. You’re basically de-naturing or breaking down chemical compounds like esters that are temperature sensitive. Also, remember that the milk should never boil because if it does, it’ll have a scalded milk taste. You should use a thermometer to make sure the milk never goes above 75 degrees celcius and keep the milk moving every once in a while so the bottom doesn’t get scalded.

When you flavour the ice cream, I’d recommend choosing only one of the ingredients from the list below. If you try mixing 2 or more ingredients, some flavours might dominate another and it ends up being a big mashup of flavours where you loose some of the more delicate flavours from lighter ingredients like green tea or certain fruits such as blackberry. Also, in some cases where an ingredient such as keylime juice is used and it’s very sour, you’ll want to add a bit more sugar in the custard to compensate for the sourness unless you pre-sweeten the juice to taste ahead of time.

Wet flavouring ingredient:

1.5 tbs vanilla extract - regular vanilla ice cream

1/2 cup of yuzu juice - original Morimoto yuzu ice cream recipe

1/2 cup of keylime juice - keylime ice cream, you’ll want to pre-sweeten the juice if you use the standard amount of sugar. Also, make sure you use a strainer to get rid of any pulp and seeds before adding to the custard.

1/2 cup of lime juice - same as keylime, sweeten to taste

2 cup of fresh blackberries - wash the berries, put them into a sauce pan with 1 to 2 cup of water so that you just cover the top of the berries. Cook the berries until they’re softened and can be eaisly mashed up, add sugar and sweeten to taste. Put the mixture into a blender and blend until it has a pureed consistency. You can also use a hand blender and do it in the sauce pan but becareful that it doesn’t spray everywhere since the juice will stain. It is very important to strain this mixture in a large strainer to remove the seeds and pulp, otherwise the ice cream will have lots of little seeds in it. Also, since there is a lot of pulp, if you use a small strainer, it’ll take a long time because the juiced will flow out very slowly. The nice thing about this recipe is that you’ll be left with some very tasty jam after you’ve seperated the pulp and seeds from the syrup. Chill this syrup before mixing into the custard.

2 cup of fresh or frozen cranberries - same as blackberries, I like making this during thanksgiving or christmas because you’ll have homemade cranberry sauce as a byproduct of making the ice cream. You can also freeze the cranberry sauce and use it later.

2 cups of fresh raspberries - same as blackberries.

2 cups of strawberries - same as blackberries, remove the green leafy bits.

2 cups of guinness stout beer - reserve 1/4 cup and set aside, put the rest of the guiness in a small sauce pan and reduce it at low heat until you’re left with 1/4 cup. Be careful not to burn it because as it thickens it can burn. Once you’ve reduced the guinness, chill it and combine it with the 1/4 cup of fresh guiness. You might want to add an extra 1/2 cup of sugar to the custard recipe since the beer is quite bitter but it’s one of the most interesting ice creams that i’ve tried making so far. You end up with 3 layers of flavours, when you first eat it, you get an immediate sweet flavour, then you’ll taste a slight bitter hopps flavour from the beer, then it leaves you with a caramel or slight malasses aftertaste.

1 large mango - get the flesh of the mango and add a 1/4 cup of water, then purree and sweeten to taste before combining with the custard

3oz of espresso - allow the espresso to slowly cool to room temperature. If you cool it too quickly, it can loose its aroma and become more sour or bitter.

1/2 cup of baileys liquor - this will lower the melting point of your ice cream so make sure you chill the custard very thuroughly (4 degrees or less) if you’re using a frozen bowl type ice cream maker. You can also do 1/4 cup of baileys and 1.5oz of espresso as well.

2oz of grand marnier - again, the alcohol will act as an antifreeze and reduce the melting point of the ice cream so you’ll need to chill it thuroughly. You could also combine this with 1tbs of vanilla extract and you’ll get a nice orange/vanillla flavour.

Dry flavouring ingredient:

1-2 whole vanilla beans
Split open and scrape the seeds out to put into the milk (where most of the vanilla flavour is), then put the outer shell/casing of the bean in the milk to steep at low heat for 10-15min. Discard the bean shell/casing when you combine the milk with the egg yolks.

1/2 to 1tbs macha green tea powder (don’t use korean green tea powder because it tastes funny)
Whisk in the macha powder into the milk and steep it for 10-15min.

2-3 teabags of whatever tea you like, such as chai
I’ve never tried using tea bags but you can do the same as you would with macha if you wanted chai flavoured ice cream. Just steep the teabags for 5-10min and discard.

Making the custard:

If you’re using a frozen ice cream bowl type ice cream maker, you’ll want to put the bowl in the coldest part of your freezer overnight or for 24hrs.

Heat the milk slowly at low to medium heat until it reaches around 60-70 degrees. If you’re using dry ingredients, you can throw it in and let it steep for the required amount of time once the milk has reached 60 degrees.

Seperate the egg yolks from the white and put it in a mixing bowl. You can use the egg whites for other things such as mousse. Beat the egg yolks until they’re just starting to turn pale.

Add the sugar into the yolks and beat the mixture until they turn pale. Make sure you scrape the bottom of the bowl with a spatula so that there are no yolk at the bottom that hasn’t been mixed in with the sugar.

Once the milk is heated up and done steeping if you’ve added dry flavouring ingredients, slowly add the milk into the bowl with the beaten egg yolks and whisk the milk into the yolks. You don’t want to do this too fast or you might shock the yolks and get clumps. Make sure you’re whisking the mixture as you add the milk.

Now that you have the yolks, milk and sugar custard mixed, put it back into the pan and heat it up until you hit around 70 degrees. It’s best to have a large bowl of cold water ready in the sink to cool the mixture. You should avoid getting the custard above 75 degrees because once it goes above that, it can scald and/or seperate and you’ll end up with some really gross mixture that looks like cheese and weigh.

When the custard has reached 70 degrees celcius, take the pan off the heat and put it into the bowl of cold water to cool it off. Remember that a pan witha thick metal bottom will store a lot of heat and will continue to heat the custard up so you want to put it into the water to cool it and keep it from overheating the custard. If you do this in the winter, it’s easier just to take it outside and shove the pan into a pile of snow and stir it for a couple minutes. This is much quicker and you can chill the custard all the way down to 4 degrees in a matter of minutes.

Once the custard is chilled, whip the heavy cream until it has soft peaks. You can vary the softness of the ice cream by varying how much you whip it depending how dense you want the ice cream texture to be. More whipping will mean there’s more air in the custard and it’ll have a softer texture even at cooler temperatures. If you have alcohol in the ice cream, you’ll want to whip it less since the ice cream will be softer even at colder temperatures.

Fold the whipped cream into the custard. Your custard should be less than 10 degrees if you’re using a freezing bowl type ice cream maker. You’re now ready to churn the ice cream. It takes about 15-30min for the ice cream to develop a soft icecream texture. Once it’s done, put it into a container and put it in the freezer for at least 4hrs or overnight so that the flavours can continue to develop and mature.

Tofu Ice Cream recipe from Morimoto (1L):

This one is a little different from other ice cream recipes in that you don’t use milk.

4 egg yolks
3/4 cup of sugar
2 cup of fresh soy milk
1 cup heavy cream

Follow the same procedure as the regular ice cream custard for whipping the egg yolks and sugar.

In a medium saucepan, heat the soy milk gently until bubbles appear around the dge of the pan. Slowly beat the hot soy milk into the yolks. Return all the mixture to the saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until the custard is think enough to coat the back of a spoon. Strain into a bowl and let cool slightly, then cover and refridgerate until chilled.

Stir in the heavy cream and put the mixture into an ice cream machine to churn until soft. transfer into a container and freeze for 4 hours or overnight.

Making sorbet:

Sorbets are fairly easy to make and work well with fruits. In the case of mango, cranberry and blackberry, you can use the syrup recipes from the flavouring ingredients above and just turn it directly into sorbet if you churn it. You might want to dilute it and sweeten more if the syrup is too thick. The key to getting a similar texture as ice cream and not making slush or a really hard chunk of frozen juice is gelatin powder. The proteins in the gelatin powder will have a softening affect much like whipping the heavy cream first and folding it into the custard.

Here’s a recipe for beet sorbet from Morimoto (makes 1/2 L):

1/2 pound beets, trimmed, peeled and quartered
3 sheets (2g each) of unflavoured gelatin - you can also use gelatin powder such as agar agar instead
3/4 cup + 2tbs granulated sugar

Boil the beets in a saucepan of water until they are very tender 30-40min. Drain, reserving 1/4 cup of te cooking water. Transfer the beets to a blender or food processor and puree. Add 3-4tbs of the beet cooking water if necessary to make a smooth puree.

Sprinkle gelatin over 2 table spoons cold water and let stand until softened, 5-10min. You want to do this so that the gelatin slowly absorbs the water. Otherwise it’ll develop clumps just like what happens when you try making flour or starch into hot water.

Transfer the beet puree to a medium saucepan. Add the sugar and 2 cups of water. Slowly bring to a boil over medium heat, skimming off any scum that rises tot he top and stirring to dissolve the sugar. As soon as the mixture begins to boil, remove from the heat and stir in the softened gelatin.

Let the beet mixture cool for 10 minutes. Strain through a fine sieve and let cool slightly, then cover and refridgerate until completely chilled, at least 3 hours or overnight.

Pour the beet mixture into the icecream machine and churn. When it’s finished, transfer the mixture into a container and freeze until it’s firm enough to scoop, at least 4 hours.

Here’s a white chocolate sorbet recipe from Morimoto (makes 675ml):

1 cup of water
1 cup + 2tbs of sugar
2 tbs light corn syrup
8oz (225g) white chocolate, coarsely chopped

In a medium saucepan, combine the water, sugar and corn syrup and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat and add the white chocolate. Let it stand for 30 seconds, then whisk until smooth.

Cool the sorbet base to room temperature and whisk again. Put it into the ice cream machine and churn until softly frozen. Transfer to a container and freeze for 4 hours or overnight.

Lastly, here’s a cheese cake sorbet recipe that I made up that’s actually based on an alcoholic drink. You’ll need to taste test at each step to make sure the amount of ingredients are balanced because I don’t normally measure so these are just rough amounts:

2 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup plain cream cheese
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
Fruity wet flavouring ingredient from the ice cream recipe

Combine the yogurt, cream cheese, sugar, lemon juice into a blender and add water until you get a consistency close to an ice cream custard. Add the wet flavouring ingredient such as blackberry, cranberry, strawberry, raspberry, keylime juice. Mix and check to see the balance between the sweetness, flavouring and creamyness is good. If you want it more creamy you can add more cream cheese.

Put the mixture into an ice cream machine and churn until soft. Transfer to a container and freeze for 4 hours or overnight.