After a couple of ice cream makes, I decided that I needed to find a base recipe that would become the go to for endless flavor manipulations.
Cue the quest for vanilla ice creams. The archive list was consulted, then each found vanilla recipe was transcribed into a word doc. Easy peasy.
It was fun to see the subtle differences in ingredients. Some had cornstarch, some had flour, others had varying numbers of eggs and two were identical but written 3 years apart and in two different cookbooks!
Though there were a few unfamiliar ingredients:
- Top milk
- Light cream
- Coffee cream
- Thin cream
- XX cream
- Single cream
Onward to the Google machine!
Top milk is the “the upper layer of milk in a container enriched by whatever cream has risen” per Merriam-Webster. Uh, ok… Further research yields little. A homesteading forum talks about top milk being the upper milk after the first cream has been removed. So it’s the 2nd layer of cream – the light cream on top of the plain milk.
If you can find cream top unhomogenized milk you should be able to get top milk (the co-op down the street has some!).
Light cream contains not less than 18 percent but less than 30 percent milkfat. Half and half (half whole milk half cream!) contains less fat than light cream. It doesn’t whip well and curdles faster than higher fat creams. Also known as single cream or coffee cream!
Coffee cream isn’t the same thing as coffee creamer. Coffee cream is a milk product and has no additional additives, while creamer is usually dairy free and made from various ingredients – water based, soy, almond, coconut etc – and can feature flavors such as French Vanilla to Hazelnut even Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Funfetti cake!
Light cream seems like it is very hard to find locally. A bit surprising as there are many dairy farms around and we are in close relation to Wisconsin. Further questing will ensue.
Thin cream = light cream
XX cream. This one was a bit of a stumper. No Google search gave any information on what the heck XX cream was. An obscure brand? Something in my head said XX = double. An inquiry on reddit confirmed that my inkling was correct. XX cream is double cream!
Double cream contains no less than 48 percent milk fat which makes it richer than heavy whipping cream (heavy whipping cream is 36 to 40 percent milk fat). It can be a little prone to getting overwhipped and becoming too thick.
The only creme thicker is clotted cream with no less than 55 percent milk fat. It’s a unique cream in that it has been scalded/cooked before being bottled. Not a cream to cook with as it tends to separate easily. Go higher in milk fat and you get butter!
Finding double cream is a hard quest. Locally there is ample choices of milk (D through skim), various sizes of heavy whipping cream and half and half. Bit perplexing. Though I discovered that Whole Foods does carry it! Yay!
