Yes it’s fall and the world is covered in pumpkin spice everything, the leaves are changing color and we’re prepping to rock cozy sweaters (just not in this 70+ degree weather we’ve been having this week).
But the thing on my mind: ice cream
This is the current obsessive, spawned during the summer after receiving the Kitchen Aid Ice Cream maker bowl for my birthday (beginning of August). Nothing happened with making ice cream until an idea from archiving doughnut recipes from the 157 cookbook recipes sparked.
Why not make vintage ice cream recipes?
Cue the compiling of ALL the ice cream recipes!
The oldest come from the 1896 Daily News the others aged up towards the late 60s. Recipes found in a “newer” cookbook that is all about the ins and outs of ice cream – Ice Cream! The Whole Scoop (1991, Gail Damerow) -weren’t added to the list as the recipes are easily found within this stout compilation.
Mid process of the archiving of the vintage ice cream recipes The Ultimate Ice Cream Book (1999, Bruce Weinstein) was found and added to the cookbook collection. It too was not archived as it could be easily found and held only ice creams within. (Technically it’s vintage being 22 years old!)
The archive petered out in gusto when the transcribing of 1-5+ recipes per cookbook started to become tedious and the archive was transitioned out of full recipes into a list of which cookbooks had recipes. 57 of the 157 had recipes for ice cream within them. (Not sure if I included “duplicate” cookbooks like the various versions of Betty Crocker & Better Homes and Gardens so there could be more.)
This archiving made me solidly want to create an ice cream but where to start? Eeenie meenie miney moe… actually it ended up the easiest found cookbook Dear Daughter: Time Tested Recipes of Five Generations (1964, 1970 Ella Mae Tucker)
Flip to the ice creams – 4 vanilla recipes! Gelatine, Junket, Eggs & Refrigerator. Hmmm… I didn’t have Junket, and was a little hesitant about doing the “custard” style that involved tempering eggs. And the Refrigerator version involved freezing the ice cream in a tray and I wanted to use the ice cream maker. Hmm…
Wait!
What the heck is Junket?
Junket is a milk based dessert with lineage way back in history from a French dish to medieval England. Recipes were cream based until the 1900s when the dish transitioned into a milk base. The Junket in this recipe actually is a type of rennet (which is an enzyme that makes milk proteins coagulate) and is available in tablets. Junket in this style has been around since 1874! In 1897 Chr. Hansen’s Laboratory issued a a little booklet named “Dainty Delicacies for Artistic Desserts” which included a recipe for Junket ice cream!
The use of Junket tablets in ice cream remained in fashion throughout the 40s and into the 50s. (There are 4 entries for Junket ice cream including the Dear Daughter cookbook in the collection: in 1929, 1933, & 1945!)
I digress…
In the secondary research I was doing into ice cream while archiving, I learned it would be beneficial to have some type of emulsifier in the ice cream that would promote a softer texture and negate some of the iciness that could occur in homemade ice creams. Cue the recipe with gelatine from Dear Daughter!
Ingredients assembled. The base made and set into the fridge to cool.
Cooled for a few hours, then the KitchenAid ice cream bowl was retrieved from the depths of the chest freezer, mounted and wrapped with a towel to help keep the bowl at maximum cold. It took a moment to get the dasher assembly figured out, but soon we were in business. Mixer turned on at the lowest speed of stir and the mixture poured in.
For the first 10 minutes of mixing there didn’t seem to be a lot happening. The liquid was stirred then stirred some more. Hopefully the base mixture wasn’t a bust… then around the 10 minute mark, the liquid began to become solid. And grow. And grow. Oh shit!
Stopped the process to scoop out some of the mixture. Totally forgot that because the mixer was 2 quarts didn’t mean that 2 quarts of liquid would make 2 quarts of ice cream! (It definitely makes more!) Whoops!
Restarted the mixer and at the mark of 12 minutes I loaded in the Oreos. At first it seemed like the Oreos were trying to get spun out of the mixer, but after two more stops to scoop out some of the ice cream (waaaay too much base mixture) I could tell they were getting incorporated.
Another 12is minutes and the ice cream was “complete” – this means it was at soft serve stage. Totally edible in this stage, but I wanted to “ripen” (aka let it get harder) the ice cream in the freezer. Plopped it into a container and stuffed it into the back of the freezer. Ran some errands, ate Chinese and let the freezer do its job.
It scooped like a dream. Tasty very yummy but did have a bit of a “butter coated” mouthfeel at the end of each bite. (Turns out this is normal with Philadelphia style ice cream- it comes from high fat content from the cream!). Aside from that it was totally yummy! Plus MEGA fun to make!
Further scoops on additional days were equally tasty, maintaining the buttery mouthfeel at the end of each bite and it stayed totally scoopable! A win for sure!
Here’s the recipe if you want to try it:
Vanilla Ice Cream (Gelatine)
Ingredients
- 1 1/3 cup milk Heat.
- 1 tbsp gelatin (unflavored)
- 1/2 cup cold water Dissolve gelatin in cold water then add to hot milk, stirring in.
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt Stir in (sugar & salt) until dissolved. Remove from heat.
- 3 cups cold cream
- 1 1/2 tbsp vanilla Add (cream & vanilla) and cool. Pour into freezer to no more than 2/3 full to allow for expansion.
Optional add ins:
- 1-2 eggs, beaten Add in at "mush" stage of ice cream (aka add in stage)
- crushed & sweetened fruit Add in at "mush" stage, omit same amount of liquid from above recipe if adding fruit.
Instructions
- Pour into your ice cream maker and follow the directions. For my batch I churned for 12 minutes, added Oreos and churned for another 12-15 minutes. It will make a soft serve style ice cream in the KitchenAid ice cream bowl – very tasty!
Notes
To make the same amount as the original recipe just double each of the ingredients. (The milk is 2 2/3 cups in the original btw.)
Did I make more? I sure did! The next batch was a frozen yogurt batch. Why frozen yogurt? I had a mostly full container of skyr yogurt that I wanted to use up before it went bad. Found a recipe and ended up modifying it due to a shortage of ingredients – was short in yogurt and honey! Added some whole milk to help balance the thickness of the skyr. We’ll see how it does!
It mixed well, I pulled it from the churning around 12 minutes. Tart and tangy, I added a bit of thinned strawberry jelly as a drizzle.
Made a fairly small batch, ate some soft churned and it melted quickly. The rest was ripened overnight. When I broke into it after it being in the freezer it was frozen rock hard. Oof!
A little counter sitting got it to scoopable, but it was a bit uneven in how it melted. The consistency was a little weird, it looked almost like freeze dried ice cream in texture, but tasted pretty good. Worth another try for sure!
Batch number three was a vegan batch with the recipe taken from Betty Goes Vegan: 500 Classic Recipes for the Modern Family (2013, Annie & Dan Shannon) – I got this cookbook for my sister’s birthday and snuck the recipe out before I gave it to her!
It was a coconut ice cream, very vegan. I followed the recipe but didn’t include the Oreos as I didn’t think the flavor would work with the chai baby bundts I made. So I whipped up a blackberry compote instead. The base was made and refrigerated while we chatted and ate lunch in celebration of my sister’s birthday. (Happy 34 sister!)
Base into the machine and at first we were good to go. The liquid looked creamy and like it was thickening, but began to look chunky as the churn continued. Perplexing. Not sure if the mixture “broke” or if the components of the base needed a different handling (I wouldn’t use coconut oil for the next batch). Served it soft serve, it was rather loose and soupy.
My sister and mom enjoyed it, but I found the coconut to be overwhelming and the texture to be off. There were clumps of coconut oil that had solidified which made it a bit weird to eat (ended up spitting out the clumps). Not a recipe that I’m going to retry.
So far I’m having TONS of fun with making ice cream!
But I need to figure out a go to vanilla base that is going to be solid to build upon. Now the bad thing about the KitchenAid ice cream bowl is that it needs to be frozen for a minimum of 15 hour prior to being used. Not quite handy for trying out multiple different recipes or different flavors in a shorter sitting.
Cue the investment into a compressor ice cream maker.
More ice cream to come!
Want to snag yourself copies of these cookbooks? You can find them on Amazon! Yuppers they are affiliate links so I’ll get a little percentage of the purchase!
If you want a stand mixer like mine (just a different color) you can find links for them in the sidebar! Plus the ice cream bowl and the ice cream maker I have!
Or head over to the Ebay machine (yes more affiliate links!) to find used versions:
Fantastic story telling!!