How to make an ice cream step by step

Ingredients for Icecream

Milk fat

Milk fat provides creamy nature and rich texture to ice cream. It also contributes to its melting characteristics. It is required that every ice cream should have a minimum fat content of 10%. However, most premium ice creams like the Coldstone ice cream can contain as much as 15% milk fat or more. Sources of milk fat include milk, cream, and butter.

Cream

The cream constitutes the solid component of ice cream. It refers to the protein and lactose in milk and it represents 8% to 12% of ice cream. It is the nonfat solids of ice cream. They play an important role in the body and texture of ice cream by stabilizing the air that is incorporated during the freezing process. Sources of nonfat solids include milk, cream, condensed milk, evaporated milk, dry milk, and whey.

Sweetener

Sugar or sugar substitutes like honey are usually added to the mix to provide the sweet flavor that gives ice cream its sweetness. In addition to Sugar’s sweetness to the ice cream mix, sugars lower the freezing point of the ice cream mix to allow some water to remain unfrozen at the temperature it is eaten. A lower freezing point makes ice cream much easier to scoop and eat. Sweeteners used include sugar (sucrose), honey, and corn syrups.
Sugar also gives the required texture to the ice cream mix and makes it stable to heat shock (because it is always subjected to varying temperatures as it goes in and out of freezers).

Stabilizers

Stabilizers are proteins or carbohydrates used in ice cream to add viscosity and control ice crystallization. Stabilizers are added to improve the texture of ice cream and prevent a meltdown. Stabilizers used in ice cream are alginates, gums (locust bean), and gelatins. Gums are the most used stabilizers because they can be used to alter the texture of ice cream in various ways. They also do not suppress the other flavors in ice cream because they often come flavorless. Egg yolks also serve as a stabilizer for ice cream that calls for an egg in a recipe.

Emulsifiers

Emulsifiers have the properties to encourage partial coalescence. Ice cream that is of premium quality should have lots of tiny air bubbles. The more tiny air bubbles these ice creams have, the creamier, the richer and softer they would become. Ice cream with lots of tiny, stable air bubbles is smoother, richer, and likely to melt more slowly than the one with fewer air bubbles or bigger air bubbles. The idea is for ice creams not to melt easily when it is out of the freezer. That’s what emulsifiers do. Emulsifiers used in ice cream include egg yolks, soy lecithin, buttermilk, polysorbate 80, and mono- and diglycerides.

Flavorings & Colorings

As noted above, a wide range of flavorings are used in ice cream. There are more than 600 known flavorings available for ice cream. They include natural and artificial flavors, fruit, nuts, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, butter pecan, e.t.c. You can read more on the most two popular ice cream flavors on our Chocolate vs Vanilla: which one is better?

Colorings for ice cream but the commonly used ones are beta carotene, curcumin, and annatto.

Ice cream dry ingredients are weighed and added to the mix in the tank or container. In order to ensure that the mixing is done correctly, you would have to mix the dry ingredients thoroughly with part of the sugar and add the remaining part later. Achieving the desirable result also requires sifting these dry ingredients like powdered milk and gradually adding these dry ingredients into the mix while churning the entire mix slowly. In fact these are being done in order to ensure that the dry ingredients are suapended in the mix. This is to avoid lumpiness of the ice cream mix. If the ice cream recipe calls for gelatin or other stabilizers and emulsifiers, this is the perfect time to add them.

Using an ice cream maker to blend the ice cream ingredients is well advised. This is because during the churning/mixing process, it adds air bubbles to the mix.

Pasteurize the mix

This is simply a process whereby the the ice cream mixture is heated up to kill the pathogens and also extend the shelf life. The mix is treated to a mild heat usually below 100 °C. and is quickly cooled down to a temperature of between 0°C and -4°C for few hours. In some commercial manufacturing plants, it can cool for longer as flavorings and colorings are added at this stage.

Homogenize the mix

Ice cream containing fat globule must be homogenized. Since most ice creams do contain fats and oils, it becomes necessary. The idea behind homogenization is to decrease the size of the fat globule which in turn results to a stable emulsion, creamier and smoother ice cream. Homogenization also helps the emulsifiers and stabilizers blend well as it is added at this stage.

Age the mix

The ice cream mix is aged at 5°C or below it for 4 hours or 24 hours under continous agitation.

It doesn’t need to freeze at this point. Ageing process improves the mixture’s whipping quality, as well as the texture and body of the product. Ageing allows the milk fat to partially crystallize and also gives the proteins stabilizers time to hydrate. It is impoertant to note here that as the aging time increases, there is an increase in the viscosity values, overrun and solidification of the ice cream mix.

Freeze the mix

This process consist freezing the ice cream mix as well as incorporating air into the mix. This process can be achieved in two ways; Batch method and Continuos method.

The addition of air is called overrun and it contributes to the lightness or denseness of ice cream. It is standard to have air as the half of the gross weight of ice cream. Some ice cream makers have knobs where you can set to adjust the level of overrun one wants. Premium ice creams like Coldstone for instance have less overrun (approx 80%) and are more dense than regular ice cream. Fruits, nuts, candies can be added at this point.

Package the mix

It’s time to get your ice cream mix into your desired containers. Oil resistant paper is advised.

Harden the mix

The ice cream is rapidly cooled down to a holding temperature of range of -20°C to -30°C for 6 to 8 hours for bigger packages and around 1 hour for smaller ones. Cooling the ice cream rapidly will promote quick freezing of water and help create small ice crystals. The hardened ice cream is then stored at around -25°C. The hardening process completes the ice cream making process and harden the product so that it doesnt melt quickly. Even at this temperature, there are still portions of liquid which have not frozen. If all the liquid were to be frozen, ice cream would be like ice cube.