How do you get ingredients thick enough in home made ice cream?!
How do you get ingredients thick enough in home made ice cream?
We bought a nice, Cuisinart Ice Cream maker and have been unable as yet to get the ingredients thick enough to make into ice cream! We have followed directions, frozen the bowl but when we get to the twenty minute mark, it is still not even close to being thick! Anybody else have this problem? Thanks!
Answers:
With traditional home-made ice cream freezers, the procedure is known as "packing"--after the ice cream has begun to thicken, the freezer is packed with ice and salt and allowed to achieve a harder freeze for a time. With the Cuisinart unit, you might try stopping after 20 minutes, placing the bowl in the freezer for a half-hour or so, and then trying it for consistency. The earlier freezing process with agitation allows air to be worked into the mix, which causes the ice cream to freeze in smaller, softer crystals. Then, when the pre-frozen mix goes into the freezer for packing, it will not freeze into a hard, icy mass.
Source(s):
Experience.
Foodnetwork.com has lots of icecream recipies. While they say "follow your machine's instructions", there's still tips and tricks on their recipies for different kinds, because each kind needs to be treated a little differently depending on the type of ingredients. Also, it needs to go into the freezer after incorporating enough air into the mix, and freeze it to your preference. But if those don't help, then it's probably a faulty machine and needs to be replaced.
Chill the mix in the freezer for a while before putting it into the ice cream machine. Your freezer may not be cold enough; use a thermometer to verify that the temperature is no higher than 5 F.