The Art & Science of Ice-Cream Making

Ice-cream making is an art which takes into account a considerable help from science. A solid, yet soft ice creaming is not simple to make. Simply putting a batch of cream in the freezer doesn’t make ice-cream and chances are great that you will end up with a block of hard-frozen, solid cream. A delicate, natural, slowly melting ice cream is a matter of food science and chemistry.

Here is the recipe for a soft, lip-smacking ice-cream.

Essential components of ice cream:

Ice crystal

Ice crystals form when the water content in the ice-cream mixture freezes. It gives ice cream solidity and body. The size of ice crystal decides how grainy ice cream will be. The main thing considered during placing the ice cream in the freezer is to keep the size of the ice crystal as less as possible.

Fat

Fat adds richness to the ice cream and stabilizes the base mix. Moreover, it also improves the density and flavors of the ice cream mixture and improves the smoothness of texture.

Sweeteners

Different types of sugars honey and syrups are added to ice cream for sweetness. Sweetness is essential for flavorsome ice cream as they prevent ice-cream from turning into a rock-solid. Sweeteners effects not only sweetness but also the stability of the ice-cream.

Air

Air is the cheapest ingredient used in ice-cream making. The tiny air cells are whipped into the base mix to maintain the consistency which significantly affects texture and volume. The amount of air an ice cream holds is indicated by term – over-run.

Other ingredients

It includes non-fat milk solids, like protein, mineral salts and flavoring agents, like cookie crumbles or fruits. They enhance not only the flavor of ice-cream but also the sweetness that contributes to the body, texture, and smoothness. More solid ingredients mean less ‘free-roaming’ water agents in the ice-cream which eventually limits the large ice crystals in the ice-cream. With little solid ingredients, ice cream often turns unpleasantly icy. More the solids are, sandier like sensation it creates in the ice-cream.

Blending everything

Once all ingredients are available, it is turned into a successful emulsion – process of blending different substances under normal circumstances that separate each other and turn them into a smooth, soft whipped, light, thickened, softly-melting ice cream. However, before that, the ice-cream base has to undergo different steps, like pasteurization, homogenization, aging, freezing with ice cream batch freezer and so on.

Mariam Thomas is an experienced blogger loves to write for technology, fashion, food, travel. She loves traveling, likes to cook. She likes making new friends and explores the world.