Ice cream cake

The last few batches of ice cream I made came out too fatty, if you can believe such a thing is possible. The mouth-feel of it is off. It tastes fine enough but as one proceeds with each additional spoonful the fat coats the palate and hangs there momentarily and unpleasantly. I was mixing 50% heavy cream with 50% Half & Half. 

In the United States, Half & Half is marketed as half cream mixed with half milk, but the comparison of fat contents of creams VS H&H for the brand that I looked at surprised me. Cream comes in two types around these parts, table cream for pussies kittens and heavy whipping cream for all kinds of fun. According to the package nutrition labels, the fat content of Half & Half is listed between table cream and heavy whipping cream, not halfway between milk and cream as expected.

I am still confused about this. The nutrition values on the package labels are stated thus:

Heavy cream .... 3.5%

Half & Half ........3.0%

Table cream ......2.5%

Okay, I must go back and check more carefully because I think this has something to do with the wishy-washy daily percentages listed by servings, not the absolute percentages of the product's constitution. Because none of that ↑ comports with any of this ↓ and this down there ↓ makes a lot more sense. See how they confuse us so? 

*Clutches hands, gazes upward piously and innocently * 

"Lord, look at me and see if I can stand these bastards." 

They are compelled by law to inform, and so they do, but they conform in a manner designed to confound.  Here is Wikipedia. 

I recently heard a woman who is a total babe on Fox News Network say, "Whole milk? Are you in-saaaaaane? That's like drinking cream!" 

Well, whole milk is not like cream then, is it? According to Wikipedia, the veritable font of all modern-day wisdom and never at all wrong, whole milk is just 1.25% fatter than 2% milk, negligible compared to 18%-30% fat content of table cream. Stupid bitch. Gets all exercised about nothing at all, propounding from her platform on high all kinds of sorry misinformation. Well, as I said, she is a babe with the body of life itself, so we'll give her that. 

Whatever. This ice cream is 2/3 heavy whipping cream and 1/3 milk. I am so going to die. 

Complication: I am almost out of milk, but I do have evaporated milk in tins. I learned from the internets that evaporated milk has approximately 60% of its water removed. I am imagining mathematically that if I were to dilute evaporated milk by 100% with water, that will restore it to 80% of its original state. It seemed to work although I did not taste it as plain milk. 

Four egg yolks are tempered into the cream/milk/sugar/vanilla mixture. Salt, a tiny amount, because everything sweet needs salt. 

Brought to temperature short of boiling for a light custard, a cream sauce, or a crème anglaise, which is French for English cream and ironically, or possibly paradoxically, most likely has aught to do with England. I cannot see the French giving the English credit for anything at all so maybe they considered it weak sauce compared to sturdy pudding. Whatever the etymology, that is the word for it. 

The mixture is chilled to near freezing. During this period, the cake is started. The ice cream drops to temperature before the cake is finished so the ice cream mixture is removed from the freezer and placed in the refrigerator to prevent large ice crystals from forming, which is an undesirable development for ice cream. 

The finished ice cream will go onto the cake soft directly from the ice cream maker. Then the whole thing, cake and ice cream, will be frozen together until the ice cream hardens. It seems to make sense to do it this way. An alternate idea is to use the spring-form cake pan to freeze a disc of ice cream and handle the three discs frozen separately, two cakes discs and one ice cream disc. That is still a viable option for a future cake if this turns out somehow problematic. 

The sequence is shown here in order so we leave the ice cream mixture for now which is chilled but unfinished and holding, and turn our attention to the cake. 

For the cake, the entire amount of sugar is whipped into the butter for five minutes. The bowl of this mixer sits atop the motor which heats up over time, so the whole creaming thing is slightly different with this machine than it would be with a hand-held portable mixer or with an orbital table-top mixer. After the butter and sugar are completely creamed, two eggs are blended in one at a time. 

Bakers discovered through trial and error not to dump all the ingredients together and start mixing away. They learned to whip the sugar into the fat first, then add the eggs, followed by the dry and wet ingredients added separately and incrementally. That is, the wet ingredients sandwiched between the dry ingredients like this: 1/3 dry then 1/2 wet, 1/3 dry, 1/2 wet, 1/3 dry. 

The result is a light and fluffy fairly stiff batter. 

They also learned to start the mixer slowly so powder doesn't go flying up and throughout the cooking space. They learned also to process as minimally as necessary to combine the ingredients so that the gluten in the flour does not have a chance to develop. That is why high protein bread flour is out. Its gluten develops almost immediately with the merest handling and you can end up with tough bread and not delicate cake. Low protein cake flour does have gluten protein too but much less of it therefore the result is more tender. All purpose flour is a compromise between cake flour and bread flour. A/P can be used for both cakes and for bread but it is not the best choice for either. Prepared cake mixes use low protein cake flour. 

In the case of this cake, since it is a made-up recipe, and since the type of cocoa Dutched or unDutched is unknown, so too the pH of the batter is not known. Although the cocoa does have a brown coloration suggesting it has been processed with alkali, rather than a reddish coloration that suggests unDutched or unprocessed with an alkali. Whatever it is, it sure is good. 

A portion of the finished batter containing everything except the baking powder (or the baking soda) was mixed with water and tested for pH. It indicated neutral, but showed no activity at all with the addition of baking powder. Then a mere ten seconds in the microwave caused the mixture to foam impressively. Due to its clear pH neutralness, the mixture was not tested with baking soda. 

This photo does not show completely the foaming action that happened. The foam mostly deflated when the ramekin was set roughly on the work surface with a 'clunk.'  

Instead of baking one cake and slicing it in half for two layers, the batter was measured equally into two spring-form pans. They would bake more quickly this way and I would have two tops to chose from instead of risking success on just one. 

The stove timer was set for 25 minutes but the aroma of cooked cake was apparent before the timer went off. They were toothpick-tested and removed at 23 minutes. 

Minutes count when it comes to cakes. A single minute can mean the difference between an under baked and an over baked cake, especially when the cakes are thin as this, virtually sheet cake height . 

The cakes are left to cool and our attention returns to the ice cream mixture which has yet to be processed to proper ice cream. 

The mixture is very close to freezing. This will lessen the work required of the machine and speed the process considerably. 

ARTS !

One of the layers is returned to the spring-form pan upside down. 

It is hard to know for certain without actually eating a piece of the cake, however, by handling it I sensed I might have misjudged the cooking time by a minute or so resulting in a dryer cake than desired so the decision was made to moisten the cake with Kahlúa. 1/4 cup was poured out with the intention of dividing it between the two layers, but then the first layer took up the entire 1/4 cup. I don't know what got into me, I just kept ladling it on with a spoon. As a result, this cake has a full 1/2 cup Kahlúa in it. Does that make me bad? 

The freshly churned soft ice cream is spread on top of the moistened cake layer. 

The second moistened cake layer is placed on top of the ice cream layer and the whole cake returned to the freezer to harden the ice cream center, which of course will freeze the cake also, but this cake is infused with Kahlú antifreeze. We'll see how well that works.

Two cups of cream and one cup of milk with four egg yolks worked up to about a quart of ice cream which was too much for this 9 inch diameter cake resulting in this excess which somebody must now eat. Or store or waste. 

Nom nom nyom. Shut up, I'm busy. 

The whole business also resulted in this ↓    :-(

vanilla ice cream

2 cups heavy whipping cream

1 cup milk

3 small vanilla beans

1 cup refined sugar

4 egg yolks

1/8 teaspoon salt

chocolate cake

1/2 cup butter (one stick) whipped with sugar

1 cup refined white sugar

cream for 5 minutes or until fluffy

add 2 whole eggs one at a time. 

dry ingredients

2 cups low protein cake flour + 1 tablespoon AP flour

3 Tablespoons cocoa powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

wet ingredients 

3/4 cups milk

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

Combine into the fluffy creamed butter/sugar/egg mixture 

*  1/3 of the total sifted dry ingredients

The mixture stiffenss. 

*  1/2 the total wet ingredients. 

The mixture loosens. 

*  1/3 of the dry ingredients. 

The mixture stiffens again.

*  1/2 the total wet ingredients. 

The mixture loosens again. 

*  1/3 of the dry ingredients. 

The mixture stiffens again. 

Taste-test the mixture. Consider adjustments. Alcohol? Vanilla? Spices? Cocoa? Orange zest? Mint? Consider the viscosity of the mixture. More milk? Additional flour?

Butter cream frosting

*  three sticks of butter whipped to fluff
*  5 cups sifted confectioner's sugar (powdered sugar)
*  4 Tablespoons cocoa powder
*  6 or 7 Tablespoons milk
*  1 Tablespoon vanilla

The frosting was taste-tested. Deemed excessively saccharine. Adjusted thus:
* 1/3 teaspoon flake salt (1/4 teaspoon table salt)
*  1 teaspoon powdered ginger
*  3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
*  1/2 teaspoon cayenne powder

A crumb layer of frosting was applied with the intention of chilling then following up with a finish layer of frosting, but the frozen crumb layer instantly froze the warmer but still very cold, too cold, additional frosting so the project was abandoned. A little patch up frosting was applied here and there and that ended all that. There is still quite a lot of butter cream frosting left over. 

Conclusion: Not bad at all for a cake entirely from scratch and without a reliable recipe to lean on. Even with 1/2 cup of Kahlúa it is still too dry. This tells me to aim for a wetter batter and disregard all that nonsense about high altitude adjustments for discs this short.  Nobody knows what they're talking about. Butter cream can only be applied at room temperature. 

The cayenne was an impulsive flash of brilliance. Nobody would expect such a thing. It is not apparent at first but it sneaks up on you, then WHAM, you know you've just had something different, even the trace amount added here. It's awesome.