Oh, Man. I was going to sprinkle cocoa powder around from a precise height with controlled taps to a tiny wire strainer adeptly depositing a predetermined formation of patterned dots strewn across the surface of the plate, across the ball of ice cream, and right over the spoon, for that specifically careless windblown look that is actually quite difficult to achieve.
And then I forgot.
A flavorful chocolate slurry is prepared and chilled to help the machine have a head start.
The slurry is made of milk and cream. The milk I have is 2%. Gross, I know, but it came from a 2% cow and they need a place on this Earth too ya know. So I compensated for my 2% milk with four egg yolks. But not just ordinary egg yolks. These were jumbo egg yolks and one of them was double so there were actually five, and that's a lot of egg yolks to compensate for watery milk considering there is only going to be a quart total and half of that is heavy cream.
So, milk cream and eggs.
Then sugar and corn syrup. Corn syrup to help prevent crystal formation, an undesirable development in ice cream. Plus vanilla, as always. Then couverture chocolate because there is so much of it around here, otherwise I'd use cocoa which is the same thing except all of the chocolate solids and none of the chocolate fat. And I rather like chocolate fat, and the milk I am using is weak, so couverture it is.
Plus coffee.
Soft ↑ from the little toy machine.
Frozen hard ↓ but not so hard as you might think and I'll tell you why.
It cannot get too hard. Corn syrup interferes with crystal formation, and air is whipped in. Turned in or folded in is more like it. You can see by the photos that the volume increases as the slurry churns and chills.
With this espresso we come to an oddly human dichotomy. One of those cognitive dissonant things that some find unbearable and others don't notice, but still allow us to carry on while operating under diametrically opposed assumptions, standards, procedures, controls, values.
On the one hand chefs abjure freeze dried coffee. Chef, please. With all that amazing coffee around and all their mad coffee techniques, and their heightened appreciation for the minute differences.
And on the other hand they also know precisely how to get the freeze dried version to explode back to its pre-freeze dried state as best as possible. So all we cool kids use this stuff here ↑ as a matter of convenience. It took a few tries to find. I did find it eventually in the ordinary grocery store right at the spot where coffee things and Mexican things converge. It's a no-class slipshod trailer park white trash hack, like cheating on something that's easier to not cheat on, like adding Kitchen Bouquet when you know how to get that flavor and color the authentic way but just cannot be arsed.
Today I saw a chef explain his house spice mixture. Old Bay + paprika + cayenne +garlic powder + black pepper + celery salt +cinnamon + bay leaf. And I'm sitting here thinking, "You dumb ass, why start with Old Bay and then duplicate the elements contained in Old Bay? See what I mean? Do I have to say it again? It' a no-class slipshod trai ...
The wafer thing I just kind of reinvented. I figured, okay, a very thin crêpe except with a lot of sugar and be sure to add vanilla. That's it. Mine stuck to the no-stick pan. The pan was a disqualifying problem. I tried baking on wax paper but it melded onto the paper. Maybe they can be baked with parchment or on a Silpat. I did't try these last two. The wafers were a problem but they are delicious, like a fortune cookie. Baking and less sugar is probably the way to go and maybe the batter can be squirted in a crosshatch pattern from a condiment squeeze bottle.
3 comments:
What kind of ice cream machine do you have? Do you like it? Have you ever attempted anything super exotic in the way of ice cream? I've never once made ice cream. I have a cuisinart I received as a gift a few years ago, but have never used it. I have a deep seeded fear that I could not do better than Ben and Jerry and then all of those rich, expensive ingredients would be wasted!
This is a machine I bought from eBay for $30.00.
I debated because I didn't want to store another machine that doesn't get used. But as it turns out, it does get used.
You have an excellent machine there and that was a fine gift. The Cuisinart's that I looked at make two flavors at once.
I think Ben & Jerry's is great because they mix in less air so it is denser and heavier than others. I'm sure that once you try your machine and see what a thing of beauty the whole thing is that you'll be devising ways to improve on Ben & Jerry's. You won't ruin anything and it's an especially fun thing to do with kids.
This comment is to say thanks, i dont comment frequently, but when i do it really is always for something really great.
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