Ice Heroine
. . . Because ‘Sorbet Heroine’ somehow doesn’t have quite the right ring to it. Or even ‘Granita Heroine.’ But all of those of you who don’t read comments, look at what arrived last night. And for those of you who do read comments, myself included, I want to read it again. Carefully.
Which I’m going to do right now, leaning back with my feet up, and a bowl of something chilly at hand. It’s been a heavy, sticky day–Connie and I this morning were rolling Sisyphus’ boulder uphill for our lesson, and the hellhounds permitted me to get on with work after only a token post-lunch riot*–and definitely a perfect moment for a dissertation on sorbet.
Anette, the Great Dane |
Dear Robin
This is a bit big for a comment and not on topic anyway, but perhaps you can use it as a blog.
Note: Yes, thank you very much, I will.
NON-DAIRY ICE-CREAM 101
If you freeze a cup of still, pure water, you get a big, hard ice cube, and the purpose of making ice-cream is actually to break that cube into something edible. Flavor is usually added as well, but that is not the main purpose (see Medieval Ice-cream).
In a household kitchen the breaking is normally done by adding fat, sugar, alcohol, fibers, or air. Commercial ice-cream makers have a few extra options, but let us stick to food and leave chemistry out of the kitchen.
Fat in ice-cream usually means cream, but egg yolks can serve the same purpose (see Sabayon Ice-cream). Oils are best used only for greasing any moulds used to shape the ice-cream, and while I have tried making ice-cream involving avocado, the result frankly wasn’t good enough for me to post a recipe. Coconut cream is a possibility, if you like the flavor, but I think it works more because of the fibers than because of the fat (see Coconut Ice-cream with Lime syrup).
Sugar of some kind is added to most ice-creams, but if you have an especially nice honey or maple syrup, it is entirely possible to make a sorbet just with this. The proportions are about 1 part sweet-stuff to 4 or 5 parts water (volume and weight comes out about the same), but taste before adding all the water, and remember that it becomes less sweet when frozen. If you are one of us barbarians, who occasionally add things to wine, then a dollop of Rose-Honey Ice-cream isn’t bad in a glass of slightly sour wine.
Alcohol is very useful in any non-dairy ice-cream not intended for children. Cordials are the obvious choice, and I tend to use them in approximately the same proportions as the sweet-stuff above (see Coffee Ice-cream/Granita and Chocolate Ice-cream). The strong, non-sweet alcohols I tend to use only in the shape of a splash of brandy in a Strawberry Ice-cream or rum in Peach Ice-cream (see Fruit Ice-cream), but Vodka Sorbet works well in both mixed drinks and in cold tomato soup. The once so popular Champagne or Red Wine sorbets have never worked very well for me, but try taking a look at the recipe for Punch Ice.
Fiber in the shape of a fruit pulp makes what is probably the best base for non-dairy ice-cream (see Fruit Ice-cream), and I cannot think of any fruit that would not work. Tofu must be the silk type, and – while I’ve never been quite satisfied with my results – it isn’t bad in the Tiramisu-mousse Ice-cream. Coconut I have already mentioned, but chestnut puree works as well – I just don’t like it very much.
Air is what you add to your ice-cream by churning it while it freezes, and you can enhance the effect by adding stiffly beaten egg whites to your ice-cream mix (see Punch Ice-cream, a.o.). It is, however, also possible to use beaten egg whites to make ice-cream without churning (see Chocolate Chinchilla Ice-cream a.o.).
MEDIEVAL ICE-CREAM:
In a way it’s silly to make so much work out of serving people, what is basically a cup of water, but it does look pretty, and if your guests have various allergies or diets, it’s a fairly useful dessert.
Ice-cold or even frozen whole fruits used to be considered a luxury (the ice-swans filled with fruit on buffets are a remnant of that), and from that there’s only a brief step to re-freeze shaved ice in the shape of fruits.
Ingredients:
Boiled water,
Egg white (optional),
Syrup, essence or cordial.
Start by chilling the boiled water, and prepare as many individuals moulds as you want by either greasing them with almond oil or lining them with kitchen film/saran wrap. Be careful to get the film smooth on the mould, so it doesn’t get frozen into the ice. Churn the water in an ice-cream maker, spoon the slush into the moulds, and freeze. If your guests don’t include vegans or people allergic to egg, you can get a softer set by adding a stiffly beaten egg white per pint (2 cups/500 ml) to the water before churning. When serving remove the moulds and drip a few drops or spoonfuls of your chosen flavor to the centre of your ice, from where it’ll spread through the shape and puddle around the base. I’m partial to Cherry Cordial, but Crème de Menthe (Mint Cordial) or Limoncello (Italian Lemon Cordial) are nice too.
SABAYON ICE-CREAM
I don’t know if everybody is familiar with the Italian dessert, Sabayon, which is made by whipping egg yolks, sugar and wine or fortified wine together over a low heat until you have something resembling a very fluffy custard. You can freeze a normal Sabayon to an ice-cream without any churning, but I think the result is better with churning and a few tweaks to the recipe. It’s also less work, because with churning it becomes unnecessary to heat the mix.
Ingredients:
4 egg yolks,
4 tablespoon sugar,
Ca. 150-250 ml (0.5 – 1 cup) marsala (sweet fortified wine), sherry, white wine, rum, etc.
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until they are thick and almost white. Add the liquid, beat again, and taste to see if it needs more, then freeze while churning. This is a fairly small amount of ice-cream, and if you serve it on its own you might want to double the recipe for four persons. It is, however, a very intense ice-cream, and I usually serve it along with fruit. The marsala version is good with grapes in wine jelly, the rum with baked banana, etc.
COCONUT ICE-CREAM WITH LIME SYRUP
Coconut cream/milk varies a lot from brand to brand, and you might want to dilute it with 0.5 – 1 can of water.
Ingredients:
1 can of coconut cream or milk,
Sugar,
Water,
2 limes,
0.5 vanilla pod.
Pour the coconut cream/milk into a bowl, and sweeten it to taste – you need to stir until the sugar is completely dissolved – then freeze while churning.
While the ice-cream is churning grate the zest of the limes, and squeeze out the juice. In a small pot mix the juice and zest with approximately the same amount of water and at least 4 tablespoons of sugar – you might want a lot more sugar – then heat gently while stirring. It should take only a few minutes at a low simmer before this small amount thickens and becomes syrupy.
Serve the Coconut Ice-cream with the Lime Syrup dripped on top and perhaps a sprinkling of chopped chocolate.
ROSE-HONEY ICE-CREAM
Ingredients:
Honey,
Water,
Fresh leaves of fragrant roses or rose water,
A clove or a few whole cardamom pods (optional).
Gently heat the honey with twice its volume in water and the whole spices. Remove from the heat, and dilute with more water until you have the sweetness you want (again remember that freezing “steals” some sweetness). Add the roseleaves (I like the color that dark red ones gives the ice), and let it steep all day or overnight. Sieve and freeze while churning.
I plan to try this with edible gold or silver added after the sieving
VODKA SORBET
Pure vodka doesn’t normally freeze, so you’ll need to dilute it. Water will do the trick, but I find the recipe below more useful.
Ingredients:
1 part vodka,
4 parts 7-up (stirred to remove some of the fizz),
Lemon juice to taste.
Mix and freeze while churning. Serve in a glass and pour over for example orange juice, spicy tomato juice, Blue Curacao, Crème de Cassis, Ginger ale or Dry Martini.
All the ice-cream recipes so far have been of the sorbet/sherbet type, but where sorbets are supposed to be smooth and with ice crystals as fine as possible, a granita consists of coarse crystals of flavored ice and cannot be made in an ice-cream maker.
How to make Granita:
Pour your flavored liquid into a shallow, lidded freezing container and freeze for about one hour. Stir the ice along the sides into the liquid in the middle with a coarse fork and freeze again. Repeat 3 or 4 times until it’s all frozen. The granita is now ready to serve, but if you need to keep it frozen for a while, you can just scrape it up in free crystals again when serving.
COFFEE ICE-CREAM/GRANITA
This is basically just frozen very strong and sweet coffee with – or without – a big splash of coffee cordial, but it’s very good as both sorbet and granita.
Ingredients:
8 tablespoon grinded coffee,
4 tablespoon sugar,
2 pints (4 cups) boiling water,
Coffee cordial to taste.
Let water, coffee and sugar simmer together for 30 min, then cool, sieve, add the cordial, and freeze.
TEA ICE-CREAM/GRANITA WITH LIMONCELLO
Just as with the coffee this works equally well as a sorbet and as a granite.
Ingredients:
3 bag of your favorite tea,
1.5 pints (3 cups) boiling water,
0.5 cup sugar,
Limoncello to taste.
Pour the hot water over the tea, and let it steep for 5 min before removing the bags and adding the sugar. Stir until the sugar has dissolved, and let it cool. Add the cordial, and freeze.
If you prefer it, you can use other fruit cordials such as peach or apple instead of the Limoncello or you can just omit it.
LEMON ICE-CREAM/GRANITA
I find this a bit boring on its own, but very nice in a glass of ice-tea.
Ingredients:
150 ml (ca. 0.75 cup) lemon juice,
The grated zest of a lemon,
150 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
250 ml boiling water.
Dissolve the sugar in the water, add the other ingredients, cool, and freeze either as a sorbet or a granite.
FRUIT ICE-CREAM
You can sieve a mush of for example strawberries or passion fruit and make a granita, but fruits still with their fibers are also ideal for sorbet.
Here’s a series of different fruit ice-creams all intended for sorbets:
Peach:
1 can of peaches with liquid.
Blitz in a blender or food processor until smooth, then freeze while churning.
This is the easiest of all ice-creams, and other canned fruits such as apricots and pineapple can be treated the same way.
Passion fruit:
The pulp of 8 or more ripe (wrinkled) passion fruits,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
250 ml (1 cup) cold water.
Mix and stir to dissolve the sugar, and let it steep for 1 hour. Sieve and freeze while churning.
Watermelon:
1.5 pound watermelon meat without pips,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
Juice of half a lemon,
250 ml (1 cup) cold water.
Mix and blitz together in a blender or food processor until smooth. Freeze while churning.
Other ripe melons can be treated the same way, as can pineapple.
Strawberry:
I am so fortunate as to have a very superior old type of strawberries growing in my garden. Most of the crop is eaten fresh and straight from the plants, but in bumper-crop years I sometimes want to preserve some for later as an ice-cream. Commercially grown strawberries are types where things like stiff stalks, high yields, and tough skin are more important than flavor, so I really think you need different recipes for different types of strawberries.
Ingredients I:
1 pound full-flavored strawberries,
2 tablespoons of sugar.
Blitz, taste, sieve, and freeze.
Ingredients II:
1 pound fresh strawberries,
1-2 tablesp. fresh orange or lemon juice,
100-150 g (0.5 cup sugar),
75 ml (0.25 cup) water.
Boil the water and sugar together for a few minutes to dissolve the sugar, and let it cool. Blitz and sieve the strawberries, add the other ingredients, taste, and freeze.
Ingredients III:
1 pound frozen strawberries,
1-2 tablesp. fresh orange or lemon juice,
0.5 split vanilla pod,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
Mix all the ingredients in a pot, and let it stand until the strawberries have thawed and produced some liquid. Boil together at low heat, and let it cool. Blitz, taste, sieve, and freeze.
TIRAMISU- MOUSSE ICE-CREAM
Just replacing mascarpone with tofu in a Tiramisu doesn’t work unless you adjust the other ingredients. Once that is done, it’s actually better frozen, and if you are going to freeze it anyway you don’t really need the tofu to dilute the taste.
Ingredients:
4 egg yolks,
60 g (0.25 cup) sugar,
1 packet silk tofu (that’s 125-150 g (5-6 oz)) (optional),
4 egg whites,
60 g (0.25 cup) sugar,
Instant espresso or coffee powder,
4 tablespoon dark rum,
Good quality dark chocolate.
Beat the egg yolks very thick and pale with the first portion of sugar. Cream the tofu until smooth. Whip the egg whites to a stiff meringue with the second portion of sugar. Dissolve enough coffee in the rum to get a pronounced coffee flavor. Chop the chocolate. If you want to make this in an ice-cream maker, mix everything except the chocolate, which should be sprinkled over after freezing. If you have a very cold freezer, there’s no need for churning, and you just mix everything and freeze it in a container. Serve with cookies, but try finding some more interesting than Lady Fingers. I like Cat Tongues and Florentines.
PUNCH ICE
It quite possible to make an ice-cream just by freezing ordinary punch (lemon, sugar, rum and water), but this recipe started life as a Jewish version of the Victorian party-dessert Ice-Punch. The texture is supposed to be very slushy, so that you can almost drink it.
Ingredients:
0.5 bottle of champagne or sweet white wine,
Juice and grated zest of 1 lemon and 2 oranges,
75 g (0.33 cup) cane sugar,
4 tablespoon rum,
4 egg whites,
150-200 g (ca. 1.5 cup) powdered/confectioner sugar.
Mix wine, juice, zest, cane sugar and rum, and let it stand until the sugar has dissolved (over-night is fine). Freeze while churning until you have a thick slush. This you can store in the freezer for a few hours, but if you leave it longer, you’ll probably need to break it up with an electric whisk. Shortly before serving beat the egg whites to a meringue with the powdered sugar, and fold this into the slush ice. Serve immediately in glasses or small bowls.
CHOCOLATE ICE-CREAM
It is entirely possible to make a non-dairy chocolate ice-cream. The simplest ways are:
Version 1: Replace the wine in the Sabayon Ice-cream with Cocoa cordial.
Version 2: Replace the vodka in the Vodka Ice-cream with Cocoa cordial and the lemon with vanilla extract.
Version 3: Replace the coffee in the Tiramisu with good pure cocoa (not the sweet instant) powder, but add it to the eggs as it might lump in the cold liquid.
My favorite non-dairy chocolate ice is however something entirely different:
FROZEN CHOCOLATE CHINCHILLA
Now, before anyone start accusing me of covering small animals with chocolate, I better explain that a chinchilla can be both – though not normally at the same time – a small fur-bearing animal and a soft cake made almost entirely of beaten egg whites.
Ingredients:
6 egg whites,
125 g (5 oz) grated dark chocolate or 4 tablespoons pure cocoa and 5 tablespoons sugar,
2 tablespoons chopped nuts,
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon or coffee powder (not instant).
Beat the egg whites very stiff, fold in the other ingredients, and bake (medium heat) or steam for about 1 hour. A chinchilla is normally eaten warm or tepid, but I like to eat it slightly frozen/partly thawed.
Anette, the Great Dane
* Involving plastic rings, tennis balls, tug of war ropes, etc
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.
Yes, I saw this last night and went “holy cold things, batman!”
I was supposed to go to the store this morning, but didn’t feel like waking up in time. As a result, I have no ice cream. I’ll have to settle for licking the screen…
Well you could get out your spare fruit and blitz it and stick in the freezer and then lick the screen while you’re waiting. (Do your shops all close at noon? How peculiar.)
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I was just looking at these again and drooling over the keyboard – Yay! for Annette our cool recipe heroine!
Yaay! :)
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****** Connie and I this morning were rolling Sisyphus’ boulder uphill for our lesson
I love DWJ’s idea of sisyphus’ task as eternal filling and form filling (The Game). I’ve worked in the collector of taxes offices and no matter how hard work it was, there must surely be more pleasure in struggling towards a goal with a partner like Connie (i love her from her expressions) than filing… ?
Yes, well, by the end of the lesson we’d *got the boulder up there* which is something poor Sisyphus could never do.
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What were you working on, boulder-wise?
Just a good forward going working trot, to begin with!! It was too HOT! I keep screwing up half pass–I can ****never remember which way I’m going**** and poor Connie does exactly what I tell her, obviously wondering what this lunatic is trying to do!!!!!! –But we did eventually get some good trot lengthenings and a medium canter . . . without coming unglued on the corners. :)
Wow. Well done to Annette! Thank you!
This is going in my file ready for summer!!
Oooh, lovely recipes.
A question for Anette–In the passion fruit mix would the amount of fruit be about equal to the amount of watermelon in that one? I have access to passion fruit pulp (frozen) but my plants are young and have produced only 2 fruit so far, so fresh, actual fruit are not an option..
No, passion fruit is much stonger in flavor than any melon. You barely get more than a tablespoon sieved pulp per passion fruit, so we are talking about 150 ml or half a cup. I generally aim at making 1 pint (2 cups) ice-cream as most makes takes up to 1.5 pints.
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Thanks for the clarification. I can almost taste it already!
I don’t have time. I barely have time to read the blog and comments. Anette you’re amazing and systematic and not only am I drooling I am envious and drooling. Well done!
It sounds like you are back to HOT weather: sympathy. I’ve been on the road for two days, beautiful weather actually, but it’s supposed to get very hot in New England tomorrow or Thursday. It’s July, so not unexpected, but unpleasant. I hope you get your cool-down without any more rain.
Thanks to Anette for the suggestions, especially the fruit ones. Good ways to beat the heat!
I do NOT have room for an ice-cream maker. I do NOT have room for ice cream maker.
I can do granita, though. Thank you so much for the recipes!
Here’s one more for the collection:
Lavender sorbet
Liquidise two ripe Ogen melons, the juice of two lemons and 120g (4oz) caster sugar. Infuse 15g (half an oz) fresh/dried lavender flowers in half a bottle of gently warmed, dry sparkling wine or champagne, for 15 minutes. Drain and press through a sieve, then add to the puree, followed by two beaten egg whites. Add one or two drops of mauve food colouring and place in an ice cream machine or whisk the mixture and freeze, then whisk every 20 minutes until set.
By the way, cheating and adding a drop of essential oil of lavender is a failure – I’ve tried! Flavour too strong.
Yum! I’m not going to use the food colouring though, what am I going to get, grey?
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I’ve never used food colouring either – it comes out sort of neutral colour. And is lovely!
She says to bake the chinchillas at “medium heat.” What temperature would that be?
That’s 180-200 Celcius, which I think is about 350-400 F. I have no idea about gasmarks.
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‘Medium’ as I know it is 350. 400 is the lower end of ‘hot’.
A lifetime of dealing with somewhat unreliable ovens has given me a rather lackadaisy approach to temperatures. There’s low for things like meringue and rice-pudding, high for crackling, and medium for just about everything else. I don’t think I’ve ever had an oven where the temperature it produced was exactly what it said on the display. But it gets baked anyway.
Would you be interested in a 101 on the kind of bread baking you fit into a full-time workday? I’m a diabetic II so bought bread isn’t good for me.
After the work you put into your sorbets I should certainly manage to scrape together a bread entry. . . .
**Loud applause, whistling & stamping from the gallery**
I missed this when it appeared in the comments, but it’s absolutely brilliant. The vodka sorbet alone stimulates the creative juices (despite its probable deletorious effects upon the brain cells): Can I do a gin sorbet? How would it work with the jalapeno vodka recipe that I came across last fall, or perhaps with honey-pepper vodka? And wouldn’t it look absolutely stellar in a martini glass with a twist of lemon?
You do realize, Oh Sultana of Sorbets, that I’m going to have to get an ice cream maker now, don’t you?
And thank you for your clarification re: chinchillas. *snorgle*
. . . Oh, hey, GET the ice cream maker. I was in love with mine BEFORE the Sultana of Sorbets did her choreography. :)
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Thank you all for your praises. :-)
Dawn,
You can use gin, and also gin and tonic, I just prefer those as jelly, as the juniper taste is a bit difficult when ice cold. Jalapeno should work, but I don’t know if the raste gets stronger or weaker by freezing. Honey-pepper, which I know as Bear Bait, would probably be very good.
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I made the Coconut Ice Cream last night, and enjoyed it with a fresh banana…heaven!! Absolute heaven! Thank you so much, I will DEFINITELY be making this one again (perhaps next time with the Lime Sauce!)
Smiles,
JM
Wait, wait, are you the one who was offering sheet music computer-programme help? If you are (or if whoever it is is reading this comment), can you tell me WHAT PROGRAMME YOU USE?? I finally made the effort (partly fueled by the fact that SOMEBODY out there was going to be NAGGING me about it some day too soon in the future) to load the free Finale programme Oisin had given me . . . and it has two major problems, which are first that in the basic keyboard programme you can’t have BOTH clefs be bass or treble and second that you can’t change key signatures–and it MAKES you stick to the key signature you’ve chosen. But full programmes cost big ugly fortunes. All I want to do is produce a few little songs and piano things!!
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