On the making of ice cream at home

A bit over a month ago, a friend tantalized me by reporting the acquisition of a flavor of frozen dessert that sounded particularly enticing; dark chocolate chunk black raspberry coconut-based ice cream.  (It was nondairy, so it's technically not "ice cream", but that's a more readily recognized description than the FDA terminology.)   I looked everywhere in an ultimately futile effort to find some - and couldn't get in touch with the friend to find out where it came from.  Then, last night, I was picking up some stuff at The Store I Rarely Patronize when I noticed that they had an economy-grade 4-quart ice cream churn for $17 on clearance, just a bit over half price.  I grabbed it.  Tonight, I picked up a set of first-approximation ingredients for an attempt at making something that would hopefully be similar.

As could be expected, it didn't quite get there, for a variety of reasons.  And it turned out that there are a lot of things that aren't in the instructions that come with the churn.

So, here are some general tips about the process which I learned in the making of Batch Zero Point Five:

 -  If you will be including fruit in the recipe, and you're working from bagged frozen fruit from the grocery store, THAW IT FIRST. No matter where it came from, run most of it through the blender or you won't get much of the fruit flavor in the final product.  And use LOTS of fruit.  If you want two quarts of ice cream, figure on using anywhere from two to four cups of fruit puree. (Note:  The first version of this said "quarts" instead of "cups" for the amount of fruit.  That would still work, but you'd get something closer to sherbet.)  You can also add chopped pieces of fruit for the sake of appearance, but it's the puree that you mix into the main slush that will deliver most of the flavor.  Don't stint on it.

 -  If you are using whipping cream as one of the ingredients, the mixture you place in the churn needs to be fairly cold going in or you'll end up with butter on the paddle. But if you're making nondairy stuff (such as coconut-based), adjust the temperature (usually upward) to ensure that the starting mix is LIQUID.  Under no circumstances should you start with something that's the consistency of whipped margarine or room-temp shortening; it just will not mix. 

 -  Most of the recipes you will see call for sugar in one form or another.  Yes, you can substitute a no-calorie sweetener instead; I used sucralose in Batch 0.5 to acceptable effect.  The results will not have quite the same mouth feel, but it'll still be good.

 -  Chocolate chunks may be better held until the end of the churning, and then mixed in with a spatula or large spoon while the ice cream is still at soft-serve consistency.  (That's where you stop the churning process; it hardens to the final consistency either in your freezer or sitting in the churn with the drive stopped.)  If you put the chocolate chunks in at the beginning, they may all end up near the bottom of the mix.  Ditto for whole blueberries.

 -  Be prepared for problems; have a bucket handy that you can dump that ice and salt and water into from the churn's outer bucket.  If you stop the unit for some reason, a layer of ice can form very rapidly in the mixture on the inside of the churn, freezing the paddle to the container.  If that happens, you will need to remove the inner container, run some warm water over the outside of it to free everything up, dump the outer bucket's ice/salt/water mix into another container, and then reassemble the churn/paddle/drive and get it back into the bucket before putting the ice back in.  If you try to just slip the inner container back into the ice and water, you'll almost certainly end up with ice jammed under the inner container that will keep you from getting the drive latched back down. 

 - A lot of these units have a drain hole in the side of the outer bucket up near the top.  It's there so that if you get overenthusiastic with adding ice, the excess water will run out onto the table, countertop, your lap, the floor, or whatever, instead of getting into the ice cream.  Salt in the ice cream would be a not-good-thing, so don't block that drain hole.  Unless you're making a batch of ice cream that's close to the capacity of the unit, you really only need to keep the water and ice level about two inches above the initial level of the ingredients inside the canister.  For a small batch, that may result in the bucket being just half full; you don't need to worry about overflow at that point, but you do have to be concerned about the possibility that all of the ice will melt.  It's best if there is at least some ice down at the lower levels, and plenty at the top for the salt to work on, but I don't recommend stopping the churn to pour out water; just add ice and salt, and keep going.  If the water level is close to the hole and you've got ice piled up above the rim of the bucket, there will be some overflow shortly.

 -  The instructions I have found (both with the unit and elsewhere) call for crushed ice.  Don't sweat it; if all you can find is cubed, it will do, but you will have to do a lot of scooping of more cubes into the bucket as the cubes melt. Those same instructions call for rock salt.  If you live in an area where rock salt is sold in huge bags dirt cheap because of snow and ice (or other really hard water), using rock salt makes sense.  If, however, you live where this is not something that you need to keep handy, then any kind of salt will do.  Buy whatever is cheapest per pound without having to lug home a huge bag.  Here, that's the local store brand non-iodized table salt.  It worked just fine, at less than a quarter of the price of rock salt that was sold for use in making ice cream.

 -  Unless you like frozen desserts A LOT, or you're having a party for a dorm full of teenagers who generally treat the tableware as the fourth course of the meal, a bigger batch just means that you're going to have to finish a whole lot more of that flavor before you can move on to the next one.  Experiment with small batches - but bear in mind that a batch much less than a quart of finished volume (figure that's what you'll get from 20 to 24 ounces of initial mixture) may not churn very well.  And the cleanup task is identical regardless of how little you made.  (If you make way too much, it can get larger than normal, of course...)

 -  With great ingredients come great frozen desserts - sometimes.  Taste the mixture before committing it to the churn; if it's not right, fiddle with adding more of whatever's needed until it comes out the way you want it.  It's much easier to fix a batch that hasn't gone in yet than to rework one that came out wrong.

 -  If you decide to use high-fat coconut milk as your base, eat the final product somewhat sparingly.  Coconut oil has an annoying laxative effect when consumed in excessive amounts - and that amount varies from person to person.

I haven't tried it yet, but I suspect that this thing might be able to make frozen daiquiris.   That is an experiment which will have to wait for the days immediately before a party...