Misadventures In Ice Cream Making, Again

[mark_asphodel]

Tonight, my most excellent spouse mentioned that he was thrilled I made my own frozen desserts, because he felt most people were intimidated by them.  

Not that they always turn out well.  The prickly pear frozen thing we were enjoying tonight was supposed to be an ice cream, but it ended up more like a two-layer frozen... thing.  I used this recipe from Frieda's because it used six prickly pears and actual cream, but I think it was missing a few steps.  Maybe the heavy cream should've been whipped.  The whole thing really should've been allowed to cool before mixing in egg whites.  And the custard didn't properly thicken after half an hour of stirring.  Anyway, despite all the dairy the stuff ended up with a gritty-flakey texture... which my husband liked, but it wasn't the sort of thing I could serve guests.  It was pretty-- an intense deep pink with a ribbon of very pale pink-- and tasted good, but wasn't ice cream.

I then redeemed myself by making a cobbler using fresh rhubarb from my yard and intense little Michigan strawberries.  Yum.

Comments

[amielleon]

That recipe makes me wtf. Whipped egg white--it's going for a fake foaming action to make the ice cream artificially fluffy I guess?

One thing I actually do have some firsthand experience with here is the fat ratio. Counterintuitively, I've found that fruit ice creams turn out better with a lower ratio of milkfat. And also that their texture is always best soft served out of the ice cream maker.

[mark_asphodel]

Yeah, a lot of the recipes that call for not necessarily churning the ice cream seem to rely on whipped eggs.