Lemon ice cream

[redbird]

My current theory on the ice cream maker is that I want to make flavors that I can't just go to the supermarket and get from Ben and Jerry's or Haagen Daz. That's why my first batch was cinnamon vanilla, not just vanilla.

Today's was lemon. The ice cream maker's recipe booklet only had lemon sorbet, and I wanted ice cream, and cattitude had talked about fond childhood memories of lemon ice cream, so I googled. The recipe I found was remarkably simple, five ingredients, though I took it up to six by adding a little bit of grated lemon rind before folding in the whipped cream.

We like it a lot. So does julian_tiger, who also got a bit of the whipped cream that I scraped off the bowl for him.

For a good batch of chocolate ice cream, we'll need to select our chocolate carefully; Cattitude's theory, which seems plausible, is that there was wax in the Ghirardelli chocolate chips he melted for last weekend's batch, and that this was why the ice cream came out gritty. (He checked closely before we discarded the remainder of that batch, and the small gritty bits were white, not dark brown.) I was blithely thinking "well, the Guittard chips I have for baking ought to be safe," because I read the label, but I don't know whether they're required to mention it on the ingredients list if they use wax in chocolates. The large hunk of chocolate I bought for this purpose at Sahadi and didn't mention to Cattitude is from their shelf of "we cut up huge pieces of dark chocolate," so labeled only with weight, not a list of ingredients or even a manufacturer.

(My theory is "flavors I can't just go out and buy," but I would like a good home-made chocolate as well, and I think Cattitude wants to try again because the first time didn't come out right.)

---

The recipe, in case the link fails:

1 Cup granulated sugar
1 Cup whole milk
1/3 Cup fresh lemon juice (about 1 1/2 lemons)
1 Cup whipping cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Fresh mint leaves, lemon slices for garnish

Mix sugar, milk and lemon juice. Whip cream until stiff. Fold cream into milk mixture. [added October 2006]

Comments

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

The lemon rind in the ice cream sounds gorgeous.

I truly hope that those white gritty bits were ... oh, crystals of cocoa butter, or something ... and I don't live in a world where people put wax in chocolate!

http://www.ghirardelli.com/chocolate_bloom.html

"Fat bloom is the visible accumulation of large cocoa butter crystals on the chocolate surface. It is often accompanied by numerous minute cracks that dull the appearance of the chocolate."

[papersky.livejournal.com]

American chocolate has wax in it.

I can send you some European chocolate that doesn't.

However, if you don't necessarily need chocolate ice-cream but would settle for Stracciatella (vanilla with as much grated chocolate as it will hold) you can make that with any decent chocolate -- grate the chocolate as finely as you can, to powder almost, and add it to the vanilla in the maker in the last five minutes. I usually do it with Lindt 70, but probably your Sahadi stuff will be fine. Keep the chocolate in the fridge between grating it and adding it. It's also easier to grate if it was in the fridge first. Oh, and I grate it in the mouli, but you could use a traditional grater.

[redbird]

Thanks, but now that we know to look out for it, we can get European chocolate at my usual importer, or probably any number of other places around here. Lindt 70, for example, is readily available at Sahadi.

Stracciatella does sound tempting.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Substitute some good dark cocoa powder? No wax issues that way...

If I had an ice cream maker I'd have a blast making weird flavors. I love rose ice cream and lavendar ice cream. And ginger. Ginger ice cream is nummy.

[troublebrewing.livejournal.com]

The UW's Babcock ice cream has a wonderful Lemon Chip that I like very much. I think it is actually lemon ice cream with lemon chips in it. The chips are crunchy, not like chocolate chips. Maybe you can make something like that. If you can find such chips, of course. Lemon sherbet and lemon sorbet is much more common. I love your theory of making flavors you can't find commercially.

[redbird]

I'm fond of their orange chocolate chip; I may look for lemon chip next Wiscon.

[treadpath.livejournal.com]

Basil icecream is really good. I don't have an icecream maker anymore, so what I generally just do is puree fresh basil leaves in the blender and then stir them into a tub of softened vanilla icecream (then put it back in the freezer so the icecream gets hard again). But I'm sure it would be better made from scratch.

Herbal icecreams are pretty yummy too, particularly cardamom and rosemary! Mmm.

Okay, that's it. We need an icecream maker. :)