Churning Man

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But now he (with contributions from his team at Superiority Burger and many others who have helped along the way, to all of whom he gives liberal credit for the restaurant’s success) has published the restaurant’s eponymous recipe compendium, the aptly named “Superiority Burger Cookbook: The Vegetarian Hamburger is Now Delicious”. I am only a little sad that it doesn’t include his insane focaccia and bean soup recipes but I won’t dwell on this because the book is a treasure trove of insights, and he doesn’t appear to have held back on sharing the secrets of what makes the restaurant’s food sing. He certainly doesn’t with the ice cream.

This past week I got to work. The gelato recipes all have the same structure: mix the dairy and sugars, heat to a simmer (180 degrees F), hold the mixture there for thirty minutes while you infuse whatever the flavor is, then add salt, strain, cool, and let sit overnight before churning. Likewise, the sorbet recipes each use a consistent structure: a mixture of a pre-made syrup (water, sugar/sucrose, and dextrose) and a fruit puree (or chocolate). A pleasant surprise (but also not a surprise, given how good the ice cream is) is also that Dana Cree, the author of the best home ice cream cookbook written to date and co-owner of Chicago’s Pretty Cool Ice Cream, once upon a time helped design these base recipes with Brooks via late-night text message. But I digress.

The results are revelatory. I made chocolate sorbet (which is generally superior to chocolate ice cream if you love chocolate -- don’t @ me) and used the Superiority gelato base to make a black cardamom ice cream. The reason these recipes blew me away is that the results stay astoundingly soft in the freezer, with no stabilizers. The surprising yet subtle flavors (”cone” gelato and cherry vanilla sorbet, on my most recent visit) and impossibly soft texture right out of the freezer are what sets Superiority Burger’s ice creams apart from the rest. 

A big part of the reason for that softness is the process. By heating the gelato base above , you denature proteins in the dairy, which allows them to bind with more water, functioning like a stabilizer. This allows you to avoid worrying about stabilizers in the first place, and to avoid using eggs, which can alter the flavor of the base (and which, especially among Superiority Burger patrons, many people don’t eat). Keeping the mix at a relatively low temperature reduces the risk of scalding the milk, but is more than high enough to denature those proteins (they start denaturing around 70 degrees C; 180 degrees F is about 80 degrees C). Holding the temperature there for thirty minutes requires a thermometer, a whisk, a watchful eye, and steady, low burner heat, but the results are well-worth it if you have the time and inclination (just try not to forget to halve the black cardamom if you’re halving the rest of the ingredients, or it might taste a little too strong). 

I haven’t done a more detailed analysis of these recipes to see where they sit in terms of water/sugar/fat/solids ratios and now that I’m thinking about it, I should also check my freezer temperature (I moved recently) , but both the sorbet and the ice cream might be a little *too* soft, which could require some adjustments to refine for my home set-up and personal preference -- in other words, some trial and error. Delicious, delicious trial and error. 

Most ice cream recipe books written for general audiences are simplified from the formulae used by the ice cream makers that write those books. One reason for this is that sometimes the recipes (or ingredients) are considered too complex for home cooks; another is that ice cream shops often do not want to give away their proprietary recipes. In any case, the implication is that while most ice cream shops use stabilizers in their recipes, most ice cream recipes do not.

I have only scratched the surface of stabilizer use—but I have found it challenging to find reliable information on stabilizers, so wanted to start putting what I’ve learned in one place. Here is a start.

How do stabilizers work?

Ice cream is a mixture of water (liquid and ice), fat, sugar, air, and often other solids like proteins and fiber. All these things exist in dynamic equilibrium, meaning that—particularly when you take ice cream out of the freezer—some of the water is refreezing while some of the ice melts.

Stabilizers (also called hydrocolloids) help make this equilibrium less dynamic, by creating a structure that helps keep everything in place. This structure of small particles exist in suspension in water, acting almost as roots holding soil more firmly in place.

What do stabilizers do for ice cream?

In the absence of stabilizers, ice crystals melting and re-freezing rapidly degrades ice cream’s quality. Have you tasted Häagen-Dazs after it has been out on the counter for too long and then refrozen? That’s what I’m talking about. It’s a bad scene.

One solution is just to eat your ice cream all in one sitting. But that isn’t always practical. Stabilizers come in handy when, like me, you prefer smaller ice cream servings.

When an ice cream is properly stabilized, the result is that everything stays where it is supposed to be, even as the ice cream mixture’s temperature fluctuates. This helps slow ice crystal growth, which is important because big ice crystals—very intuitively—are typically what make ice cream taste grainy rather than smooth. The ice cream mixture (particularly when it is melted or unfrozen) will also be thicker, more viscous, because stabilizers build structure by locking water into place.

What are stabilizers?

Not all stabilizers are unfamiliar—egg yolks function as stabilizers in custard-base ice creams, and cornstarch is used as a stabilizer in puddings, pie, and gravy. Gelatin and dry milk powder are also both stabilizers. Gums are the most “contentious”—but also the most powerful—stabilizers for ice cream. Gums that are commonly used as ice cream stabilizers include locust (or carob) bean gum, guar gum, carrageenan, and xanthan gum—though there are others. Stabilizer proponents are quick to note that these gums are nearly all plant-derived, as opposed to… mysteriously synthesized or genetically modified in a secret underground lair.

How do I use stabilizers to make better ice cream?

Glad you asked. Each stabilizer works differently. Some need to be heated to a certain temperature in order to be ‘activated’; others (like carrageenan) interact in special ways with dairy; stabilizers vary in strength; carrageenan has several different forms (descriptively called kappa, iota, and lambda) with even *more* different properties; some stabilizers are cheap and easy to find, while others must be special-ordered and can be quite expensive; and complicating matters further still is that stabilizers interact with each other in different ways, such that it is often a good idea to mix them together.

What I would like to have—but have not seen—is a table that attempts to summarize the various parameters for each stabilizer (e.g., heating requirements, ice cream mix concentration range, complementarity with other stabilizers, other chemical considerations, cost/accessibility). Here is a link to the [freely available] readings I have found to date. I’ve also linked to a few good summary blog posts below. Dana Cree’s Hello My Name is Ice Cream is the book that provides the most useful insight into how to incorporate stabilizers into your ice cream, and I have found myself using it as my go-to stabilizer reference when designing new recipes.

Underbelly NYC on stabilizers

Ice Cream Science on stabilizers

Some relevant thoughts from Michael Laiskonis

An example (pistachio sorbet), from Modern Cuisine

At some point, the same friend warned that I should use the paste sooner than later, lest it go bad. I am sure it tastes best fresher but given the near-unlimited shelf-life of peanut butter I was unconcerned. The night before a dinner party in March, I decided it was time, procured the necessary ingredients, and set everything out on the counter.

Opening the jar, my heart sank—a strange, alien substance was coating the surface of the pistachio paste, in the form of countless tiny pale green globules (I am so sorry, for both our sakes, that I did not take a photo). My plans were ruined.

Or were they? After Google proved uncharacteristically unhelpful, I decided to risk a bad stomach ache and tasted a spoonful of the globules to see if they might just be congealed oil. Bingo—back in business. It is a good thing, too, because I never would have heard the end of it.

Max’s pistachio gelato recipe is straight-forward and he is very good at making ice cream so I am sure it is also delicious. At the other end of the spectrum, I am also sure that the dizzyingly complex pistachio gelato recipe from Modernist Cuisine (which is technically a sorbet) is delicious, but I have neither Polysorbate 80 nor Gylcerol monostearate in my pantry so I figured I would save that for another, more ambitious day.

I prefer a middle ground, somewhere between a classic French-style ice cream and molecular gastronomy, which is hard to find online. Dana Cree’s exceptional Hello, My Name Is Ice Cream sets the standard for that middle ground, but we will have to wait for her next book to get a pistachio recipe (although I did use a couple of her tricks).

So I wrote my own. I wanted a low-sweetness, [relatively] high-salt recipe to let the pistachio paste take center stage (another inspiration: a distant summer memory of a salty pistachio milkshake from the Momofuku Milk Bar). Here’s where I landed:

When you let the ice cream soften for a little too long before scooping it

Pistachio ice cream

Makes about a quart of rich, savory-sweet ice cream

690g whole milk

230g pistachio paste

115g sugar

3 egg yolks

54g skim milk powder

34g glucose powder

6g tapioca starch

5g salt

2g stabilizer (I used a 3:1 mix of guar and xanthan gums)

Mix tapioca starch with 10g milk into a slurry and set aside

Set aside 200g milk and refrigerate

Prepare an ice bath

Mix remainder of milk, egg yolks, sugar, and glucose in saucepan over medium heat and whisk constantly until mixture reaches 160 degrees

Pour resulting custard into a metal bowl and mix in tapioca slurry (I use an immersion blender)

Add pistachio paste and refrigerated milk to the bowl and mix well (you should definitely own an immersion blender), placing the bowl into the ice bath

Combine salt and stabilizer and add to the bowl, mixing well to incorporate evenly and avoid clumping

Once mixture is cool to the touch, refrigerate for eight hours or overnight 

Churn as you see fit, and allow to firm up for a few more hours

Serve, perhaps in an array of mismatched ice cream bowls? 

This is what ugli fruit looks like

This was an opportunity to consider an upgrade—I’ve been wanting the option of churning multiple flavors in sequence, so I poked around to see if any self-refrigerating machines were in my price range. I found the Sweethome’s ice cream maker guide particularly helpful, and ended up ordering the Whynter ICM-15LS. Self-refrigerating machines take up substantially more space in the cupboard, but less space in the freezer than the common pre-freeze canister units, which I have used since my first ice cream machine—which relied on ice and salt—had a motor failure during a particularly busy ice cream–making week. 

I chose the Whynter over the substantially more expensive Lello 4080 Musso Lussino, which affords the One Percent of home ice cream makers shorter freeze times (in large part because it does not have a removable ice cream canister) and thus smaller ice crystals and smoother ice cream. I chose the Whynter machine, however, [mostly because I could not justify the cost, but also] because with a removable canister it is much easier to clean.

This is what my new ice cream machine looks like

Being able to make repeat batches is a game changer, but it’s not quite back-to-back, because it’s important to pre-freeze the canister for about 15 minutes before adding the ice cream mix, to reduce freezing time. Thanks to Ruben at Ice Cream Science for confirming that this was a good idea (in this post, which is also a great, comprehensive primer on ice cream science basics)—because the manufacturer provides no useful guidance.

The new Whynter machine does not reduce freezing time relative to a Cuisinart with a pre-frozen canister—among the biggest determinants of ice crystal size—so the ice cream’s quality is not an improvement. Indeed, in a couple of the batches I have made so far, particularly without letting the machine cool down in advance, the final product seems icier than in a Cuisinart. Part of this could be attributed to what seems like too wide a gap between the canister walls and the mixing paddle (aka ‘dasher’). Using stabilizers has helped reduce ice crystal formation, but the machine’s motor also struggles a bit with thicker mixes.

Those cautions aside, this new machine has been a lot of fun and I am reveling in the newfound flexibility it provides. One of my first experiments was to compare three different chocolate ice cream mixes, each a slight variation on Michael Laiskonis’ chocolate ice cream #1. The stabilizer concentration was too high in the two stabilized mixes I churned, likely because I was using a different blend than Chef Laiskonis would (I made one batch with three parts guar to one xanthan gum; and another with a 50/50 blend of guar gum and iota carrageenan). This yields ice cream that melts into pudding and is gummy, almost chewy—but both batches still taste fantastic. The unstabilized batch has chocolate whisky instead, which without stabilizers resulted in an icier batch—though one whose taste both my roommates preferred. Initially, they also preferred the texture of the slightly icy, unstabilized ice cream to the two over-stabilized batches.

A post shared by Churning Man (@churning_man) on Apr 22, 2017 at 5:01am PDT

The other trio of ice creams I made were on an end-of-Winter whim, when ugli fruit and bergamot happened to be available at the nearby grocery store. I made sorbets with both and paired them with a basic vanilla. I can’t say I recommend bergamot sorbet, but the ugli fruit turned out nicely. Citrus sorbets are tricky because the juice lacks some body compared to more fibrous fruits—ice cream or sherbet might usually be a better move, especially to maximize creamsicle vibes. Until next time though, the recipe I landed on is included below. 

A post shared by Churning Man (@churning_man) on Apr 22, 2017 at 6:28pm PDT

Ugli fruit sorbet 

Makes ~1000g, or a little more than a quart

700g ugli fruit (measured at 10.3 brix)

100g sucrose

150g light corn syrup

5g salt

2g xanthan gum (or other stabilizer; optional)

40g vodka (40 percent alcohol)

All recipes credit to Chef Michael Laiskonis

Chocolate ice cream 1

Makes about two quarts

38g nonfat dry milk powder

80g sucrose (1)

1650g whole milk

11g ice cream stabilizer [e.g. Cremodan 30, but you could use another blend]

90g sucrose (2)

125g invert sugar

492g dark chocolate couverture (66%), chopped

Combine dry milk and first measurement of sucrose (1).  Place milk in a heavy saucepan, whisk in dry milk mixture, and begin to cook over medium heat.

Meanwhile, combine the second measurement of sucrose (2) and stabilizer. Whisk this sugar and stabilizer mixture into the milk and heat to 85°C/185°F.

Gradually incorporate hot milk into chocolate and invert sugar; homogenize well with an immersion blender.  Chill in an ice water bath. Allow mixture to mature at least 12 hours.

Process in batch freezer; extract the mix at -5˚C/23˚F. Alternatively, transfer to PacoJet canisters and freeze; process as needed.

Chocolate ice cream 2

Makes about two quarts

90g nonfat dry milk powder

80g sucrose (1)

1010g whole milk

480g heavy cream (35% fat)

10g ice cream stabilizer

80g glucose powder

200g sucrose (2)

60g cocoa powder (Dutch-process, 20-22% fat)

Combine dry milk and first measurement of sucrose (1).  Place milk and cream into a heavy saucepan, whisk in dry milk mixture, and begin to cook over medium heat.

Meanwhile, combine the glucose powder, second measurement of sucrose (2), and stabilizer.  Whisk this sugar and stabilizer mixture into the milk and heat to 85°C/185°F.

Incorporate the cocoa powder into the hot milk mixture; homogenize well with an immersion blender.  Chill in an ice water bath. Allow mixture to mature at least 12 hours.

Process in batch freezer; extract the mix at -5˚C/23˚F. Alternatively, transfer to PacoJet canisters and freeze; process as needed.

Raspberry ice cream

Makes about three quarts

750g whole milk

188g heavy cream (35% fat)

150g nonfat dry milk

225g sucrose

75g glucose powder

100 invert sugar

13g ice cream stabilizer

1000g raspberry purée [this and the coconut purée in the recipe below refer to specialized professional-grade products like those sold by Boiron]

Place milk and cream in a saucepan. Whisk in dry milk to rehydrate and add the sucrose, glucose, invert sugar, and stabilizer. Heat to 85°C/185°F.

Remove from heat, whisk in the purée, and homogenize with an immersion blender. Chill in an ice water bath. Allow the mix to mature at least 12 hours.

Process in batch freezer; extract the mix at -5˚C/23˚F. Alternatively, transfer to PacoJet canisters and freeze; process as needed.

Raspberry sorbet

Makes about two quarts

55g sucrose (1)

4g sorbet stabilizer [e.g. this one from Chef Rubber]

430g water

165g sucrose (2)

110g glucose powder

36g dextrose

1000g raspberry purée

Combine first measurement of sucrose (1) and stabilizer.

Heat water to 50˚C/120˚F.  Whisk in stabilizer mixture, then remaining sucrose (2), glucose, and dextrose; bring to a boil for about 30 seconds.  Remove from heat and chill; allow syrup to mature for at least 4 hours.

Combine purée and syrup and process in batch freezer; extract the mix at -5˚C/23˚F. Alternatively, transfer to PacoJet canisters and freeze; process as needed.

Coconut sorbet

Makes about three insanely silky quarts of frozen perfection

40g sucrose (1)

6g ice cream stabilizer

730g water

300g sucrose (2)

150g glucose powder

1000g coconut purée

Combine first measurement of sucrose (1) and stabilizer.

Heat water to 50˚C/120˚F.  Whisk in stabilizer mixture, then remaining sucrose (2) and glucose, bring to a boil for about 30 seconds.  Remove from heat and chill; allow syrup to mature for at least 4 hours.

While staring indecisively at a full ice cream case, I almost always ask ice cream scoopers what their favorite flavors are. The gentleman working in Fell + Cole on this day said that rum raisin was his favorite, but that tiramisu was the best *today*. Neither are flavors that would typically speak to me (though tiramisu is among my favorite desserts), but I couldn’t help but ask why today was different from any other. 

The answer, not surprisingly, was that it was freshly churned--so it was extra soft, and extra smooth. This is typical in the best gelaterias, which serve gelato with extraordinary consistency because they make it fresh every day, but less so in your everyday ice cream shop. 

Why does freshness make a difference? Because one of the primary determinants of ice cream texture is the size of the ice crystals suspended in the ice cream mixture. One of the most magical things about ice cream is that it is composed simultaneously of solid, liquid, and gas elements (technically, because air is suspended in liquid, a ice cream is a “foam”). When ice cream has an icy mouthfeel, it’s because there are literally larger ice crystals in the mixture. This happens when ice cream has been thawed and refrozen repeatedly, but it also happens when ice cream is put in a freezer from the ice cream machine for the first time--because the machine does not *completely* freeze the ice cream. This “second” freezing process firms up the ice cream to the consistency we know and love, but not without, inescapably, making the ice cream less smooth (this is the primary argument for increasingly common “made to order” liquid nitrogen ice cream, like the nutella cone pictured below). 

A photo posted by Churning Man (@churning_man) on Sep 8, 2016 at 5:26am PDT

To compensate for a lack of same-day freshness, an ice cream maker can design her recipes to ensure continued softness, which is particularly important for wholesale frozen desserts that are sold in grocery stores. Stabilizers like xantham gum, carageenan, and guar gum can help preserve softness over time, as can alcohol, salt, or even caramel (though I have not been able to figure out why). 

But once larger ice crystals are formed, there’s no going back--so remember to ask your local ice cream scooper what’s fresh the next time you’re at the counter. 

Morgenstern’s “Heavy Hitters” series had caught my eye, a weekly special creation resulting from a new collaboration each week during August. The week I went, the collaboration was “Molto Mario’s Modena Creamsicle”, a Mario Batali-inspired sour cherry and mascarpone joint venture.

The result certainly deserved full marks for presentation. And the Sicilian pistachios gracing the dark side of the silky mascarpone were a surprising standout. The sour cherry sorbet was a little icy, but the marriage of both flavors was excellent. As the kind people at Superiority Burger know, I am a sucker for great ice cream + sorbet combinations. The cone is, as you can see, a novelty -- though I actually prefer cake cones to sugar cones most of the time (more ice cream absorption), so I didn’t really mind. I would almost always prefer waffle though, and if I’m being honest the world needs more cone innovation.

Standing in line, I made a new friend who had a cool, non-functioning watch, and talked to a stranger who was hoping Morgenstern’s lived up to her experience at Portland’s Salt and Straw. A tall order to fill, but I’m guessing she left satisfied (and I reassured her that she would).

The real MVP that night, though--and I still think about this, even six months later--was a single tasting spoon of black raspberry ice cream. Something about raspberry ice cream really works for me in general, but this one was intensely smooth, purely flavored (Morgenstern’s does not use eggs in their base, which allows delicate fruit flavors to shine), and perfectly balanced.

This black raspberry spoke to me, so much so that I returned to Morgenstern’s the following morning (they open early, at 8am) to eat a scoop for breakfast (which, apparently, is a good idea). The kind, sympathetic woman behind the counter searched high and low but there was none left--a tragedy, but there’s always next year. She did, however, offer me another tasting spoon of the new “Heavy Hitters” flavor, a lemon verbena sorbet with plum jam from Chef Marco Canora, which made the trip worthwhile.

When summer comes, I recommend you go and get whatever Morgenstern’s cooks up next--ideally in the morning, before the line starts to form. In the meantime, go whenever the craving strikes and savor the fact that ice cream doesn’t melt when it’s freezing outside. Just ask this guy (source):

Maryellis Bunn (who is 24, and founded MOIC with her partner Manish Vora) apparently conceived of MOIC because as a child she dreamt of diving into a swimming pool full of sprinkles. This is a compelling vision, to be sure, but it is not the vision of a museum--rather it is a vision of a bubblegum ball-pit for people for whom personal hygiene is secondary to 'feeling like ice cream must feel', which is to say covered in sprinkles. And thus it is also a vision for a museum filled with the type of person who orders ice cream covered in sprinkles, which is to say people who order their food based on what will photograph best. 

Museum of Ice Cream is a lick-able, likable, shareable ice cream-centric experience. Interactive highlights from the inaugural iteration in New York include a swimmable rainbow sprinkle pool, edible balloons, an immersive chocolate room and a collaborative massive ice cream sundae. 

Museum of Ice Cream exists to bring people of all ages together to share in celebration this universally adored treat. Creating exceptional experiences is at the heart of what we do. Ice cream everything, always! 

-- Museum of Ice Cream

These people, and not people who are passionate about art or about ice cream, were the "museum"'s core audience; MOIC was less about what its name most literally implies and more about Instagram hashtags (#museumoficecream). The entire undertaking was a social media masterclass, an effort to prove that its founders could take a simple, silly idea and turn it into a sold-out cultural phenomenon almost overnight.

Their social media-forward strategy worked impeccably. In July, I received a flurry of emails and facebook posts RE this new thing coming to NYC over the summer, and I was sorry to see that due to some work travel I was going to miss the opening date.

I eventually went, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly, but MOIC did not make it easy to get there--mostly because they didn't need to. Tickets were sold out by the time I got around to buying tickets, so I requested press access. I'll be the first to admit that this was a stretch for a brand new, amateur ice cream blogger. But the organizers stopped needing press the moment they had sold all their tickets, so they politely declined. I only managed to get in because I happened to check the MOIC website on the right morning--they hadn't sent an email (or even posted on Instagram or Twitter) to announce that new tickets had been released. They didn't need to.

I arrived at MOIC at 11:58am on a Thursday for a 12:00pm appointment, during a longer-than-usual lunch break. That there was a line, even for a ticketed-only experience, felt unsurprising. Is something you don't have to stand in line for really worth doing in today’s New York City?

I joined my fellow twelve o-clock people in line and we waited for uniformed ice cream princesses (pale pink dress, darker pink cardigan, white chuck taylors--earpieces in their ears and iPads in their hands) to usher us inside in groups of eight at a time. The groups of eight are arbitrary, except for that eight does seem like about the right number of people to gather in a circle to listen to a gregarious doorman ask everyone their favorite flavors and then proclaim "There's ice cream and then there's Ben and Jerry's ice cream--you know what I mean?".

I did know what he meant (I once wrote a book of poetry mostly dedicated to my personal favorite Ben and Jerry's flavor, Phish Food), but the interaction, like most of the MOIC experience, felt cloying and heavy-handedly curated. This would have been entirely tolerable had the MOIC staff seemed at all committed to the mission they were part of achieving, but I got the impression that for everyone I interacted with at MOIC this was nothing more than a summer job.

The first thing that greeted visitors inside MOIC was a giant bowl of Nerds candy boxes, like we were trick-or-treating at a house whose residents had disappointing taste. For some people this was starting off on the right foot, and those people were children. Thankfully for their parents, the continued promise of candy throughout the MOIC experience meant that for the most part children were willing to sit still long enough to snap "the *cutest* Instagram photo". 

A photo posted by Black Tap (@blacktapnyc) on Oct 23, 2016 at 8:53am PDT

The entry hallway--in which you passed by some vaguely ice cream inspired pop art--did, to the "museum"'s credit, lead visitors to a counter where ice cream was served. Flavors apparently rotated among the exhibit's sponsors, and the week I visited was sponsored by McConnell's (flavor: boysenberry and rose milk jam), a Santa Barbara based wholesaler. Other weekly sponsors included locals like Chinatown Ice Cream Factory and the comparably Instagram-friendly Black Tap, Good Humor, and a local/industrial Blue Marble and Kellog's hybrid. This is a reasonable mix of large and smaller producers, but it would have been nice to see some other local favorites represented. Ample Hills' absence was particularly striking given that they have a shop within blocks of the MOIC venue. 

PJ Linden, “Sundae Stag”

From the outset, and almost without exception, everyone in the museum was glued to their smartphone--myself included. In the era of the smartphone, every museum feels pressure from its visitors to be an Instagrammable museum. MOIC was an experiment in what would happen if museums went beyond merely allowing cell phone photography and decided to design and curate their exhibitions in order to maximize Insta-bility.

The MOIC docents were quick to explain the central genius of the curated experience, namely that the "museum" was designed like a sundae. After the entry hallway, visitors walk through the cone room, into the scoop room, through the chocolate room, and then into the sprinkle room. Nevermind that there are non-themed rooms both before and after this sundae experience; forget about the other essential components of a sundae (maraschino cherry, duh); and please conveniently ignore the fact that what kind of barbarian serves a sundae in a cone?

As far as I could tell, the cone room was the cone room because it had a lot of neatly arranged ice cream cones on one wall, and an ice cream cone chandelier (which, WANT.) hanging against another. Both of these installations were very photogenic, but were they art? Or perhaps more fairly, were they the kind of art one would expect to see in a museum? Did these pieces of art challenge their viewers to think in a new way or ask hard questions? You be the judge:

Seriously. Want. 

What else did visitors learn about cones in that room? I could not tell you, because I was too busy eating my helium-filled edible sugar-balloon and flirting with the woman who was handing them out (she offered me a second; I declined) during a curated lull between groups of eight customers at a time. I am still unclear on what this had to do with ice cream, but who am I to question an opportunity to play with my food AND talk in a hilariously high-pitched voice? Sugar-balloon leftovers stuck in my facial hair, I pressed forward.

It was at this point that MOIC became a crowded conveyor belt filled with people jockeying for the best selfie position. Embracing this new reality, I proceeded to the scoop room--but only after one of the MOIC docents gave their blessing to proceed, since it was apparently important for all MOIC guests to hear the impending advertisement in its entirety. Product-placement was a recurring theme in MOIC (recall: Nerds), but never was it more blatant than in the scoop room. 

"Wow, I didn't know that ice cream companies had big enough marketing budgets to sponsor exhibitions in the Meatpacking District", you might remark. Well, most don't--but FOX does, and thus after the scoop room's MOIC attendant asked visitors a few forced ice cream trivia questions (the answers to which were written on the wall immediately behind you), he proceeded to tell us all about the new (well, a remake) show coming soon to FOX, which we could learn *even more* about on the tiny video monitors in the center of the room.

I declined to learn *even more*, and I also declined to use one of the scoop room's ice cream scoops to place aerated play doh into a sundae that "we all build together" and that managed to be the least photogenic object that MOIC had to offer. I was, however, very interested in the wall of ice cream scoops past and present, and I asked the staff member whether a couple of the more unusual ones were specially designed for right- and left-handed people to reduce scooping fatigue (this is a genuine issue for ice cream shops). "Good question, I've never thought about that before. Probably?" This response and his spiel's stale enthuiasm both betrayed his lack of passion for ice cream, scoops thereof, and the FOX show he had pitched to us.

The chocolate room wasn't even trying. More a holding area for those waiting to enter the sprinkle pool (which, let's be honest, is what everyone came for), the three features of the chocolate room were (1) an immersive chocolate smell; (2) a bowl or two of Dove chocolates; (3) a weird video projection of melting chocolate on the wall of the otherwise dark room with no explanation of what was happening or why. Chocolate should never be an afterthought, first of all, but again: what did this have to do with ice cream, exactly?

So, the sprinkle pool. Folks' first reaction when I mention the sprinkle pool is generally "that sounds like a hygienic disaster" and that is a good instinct. It's not as gross as it sounds, though--the sprinkles are plastic, but if you are committed to diving into the pool then they do still get everywhere. I was shaking them out of my pockets and my hair for several hours.

Visitors have a limited time (five minutes) to spend in the pool. We needed to remove our shoes and were forbidden from bringing food in, which was a requirement challenged by the ample candy offerings available on the adjacent mantle. What kind of ice cream themed candy was there, you might ask? Oh, just a random assortment of things from Dylan's Candy Bar? Naturally. Five minutes is not a lot of time to take the perfect selfie though, so one could not dwell on such things. 

At this junction of the "museum" it became clear to me that I should have brought a friend, because it turns out that sprinkle pool selfies are hard to compose on your own. Thankfully one of the people who had their [selfie] shit together took pity on me and offered to take a couple photos. I wasn't prepared for a photoshoot, so they weren't the most inspired--but you get the idea.

After exiting the pool and attempting to shake all the sprinkles off my person I grabbed a handful of candy and moved forward to the penultimate MOIC room, a denouement of sorts. No sooner than I had placed a sour patch kid in my mouth did I spit it back out upon seeing that miracle berries (a fruit containing a naturally-occurring chemical compound, miraculin, that masks sour tastebud receptors) were what was next in store. Wow, I thought--what crazy sour-turned-sweet ice cream flavors does MOIC have in store for their final tasting act?

I was heartened to see a beautiful white and purple soft serve swirl served with a plain lemon slice atop a waffle cone, and asked what the two flavors were.

"Oh it's just vanilla", came the response. Injustice, I thought--how dare they present one flavor of ice cream as two colors, and what a missed opportunity to capitalize on the whimsical potential of miracle berries beyond simply placing a lemon slice on top of the ice cream cone. Most people probably didn't even think to save their sour patch kids. Shame. I enjoyed the cone, and the lemon, and even the two-toned vanilla soft serve--all of which had been delivered to me via a mysterious slotted wall by an anonymous hand--but I wasn't happy about it.

In addition to the miracle berry misdirection station, this last room did make a half-hearted attempt to resemble a traditional art museum, though all the commissioned artworks appeared crowded together as if an afterthought, but for being on-theme with MOIC's [mostly pink] color palette.

The last room was, appropriately enough, a selfie playground sponsored by... Tinder? With swings, a melting bench, and an ice cream scoop teeter-totter, the selfie-obsessed joy (and anxiety) that embodied the museum were on full display. I would have loved to get a photo of myself on that teeter-totter, but it was not meant to be--a bourgie Insta-mom had brought her two kids and their nanny to the "museum" and they were having a full-on iPhone photo shoot. I would have gladly waited longer--and, let's be honest, even asked a stranger to take a photo--but I needed to get back to work. Next time.

A photo posted by MUSEUM OF ICE CREAM (@museumoficecream) on Jul 30, 2016 at 1:34pm PDT

Epilogue

Two years ago I had occasion to visit an ice cream museum that earned that title much more literally; at the Carpigiani Gelato University, just outside of Bologna, Italy. The contrast is stark. Across two visits on back-to-back days (long story), I got a guided tour of real-life ice cream artifacts, learned about the history of gelato, and took a three-hour crash course in the science of sorbet-making.

MOIC was never an actual museum and it never marketed itself as such (besides calling itself one). Seeing the sprinkle pool selfies and pastel-backed ice cream cone photos made this clear. But for whatever reason, I still hoped for at least SOME substance.

It is likely that New York City houses more aggregate ice cream expertise than any other city in the country. Harnessing that expertise by building the knowledge and connections to bring it all together--as another NYC-based food museum, the Museum of Food and Drink is doing--would take years of planning, fundraising, and hard work. Opening a pop-up "experience" is straightforward by comparison, easier to make profitable, and more accessible to folks with backgrounds in finance and marketing. In short, this "Museum" "of Ice Cream" will not educate the next generation of inspired ice cream makers. But that shouldn't take away from the self-indulgent joy of taking a hundred colorful photographs of oneself in a sweet pastel daydream.

Well I couldn’t resist, not during peak corn season and especially not after an ice cream co-conspirator told me about the "corniest ice cream possible” that he’d been churning in the pastry kitchen where he works in Chicago. 

So I reviewed a few other corn ice cream recipes and set out to capture the essence of elote in my newest creation. The essential components of elotes are the grilled, smokey corn; mayonnaise; mild crumbled cheese; tajín (a seasoning that includes cayenne, lime, and salt); and lime. I incorporated each in different ways, and the starch introduced by the corn gives this ice cream a great, slightly chewy consistency. 

I should know better by now, but I did not do a good job of taking pictures as I went. Next time? Until then, here’s the how-to: 

Elote ice cream

Makes a little less than a quart of ice cream

Ingredients

Sweet corn (520 g; I used four ears)

Butter (15 g; approximately 1 Tablespoon)

Whole milk (280 g)

Skim milk powder (90 g)

Light corn syrup (45 g)

Salt (5 g)

Egg yolks (100 g; I used six yolks)

Sugar (120 g)

Heavy cream (230 g)

Creme fraiche (75 g)

Lime juice (15 g)

Tajín (topping; to taste)

Recipe

Husk all four ears of corn

Melt butter in a sauce pan big enough to hold two ears of corn, on medium-high heat. Add two ears of corn, turn them to coat, then blacken them on all sides (if you have access to a grill, use that instead)

As those cook, cut the kernels off the other two cobs, and use the back of your knife to press out any remaining ‘corn milk’ that lingers on the cob. Do the same to the grilled corn once it is cool enough to handle

Add the corn-off-the-cob back to the saucepan, along with the corn syrup, salt, milk powder, and milk. Bring to a simmer and cover, letting the mixture steep for 30 minutes

At minute 25 or so, mix egg yolks with sugar and set aside

Blend the saucepan mixture (I used an immersion blender) lightly, then press it through the finest screen of a food mill or through a fine-mesh sieve and back into the saucepan, setting aside the corn ‘cases’ left behind (I ate mine with nachos a couple nights later)

Bring the strained saucepan mixture back to a simmer

While the mixture is heating, prepare a bowl with the remainder of your fatty dairy (heavy cream and creme fraiche), and measure the lime juice separately

Temper the egg yolk paste with the simmering milk mixture

Add the tempered egg yolks back into the saucepan over medium heat and whisk the soon-to-be-custard frequently to minimize egg scrambling

Once the custard coats the back of a wooden spoon (or registers 160 F, if you are fancy and have a thermometer), pour it into your dairy fat bowl and mix everything together

Place the resulting mixture in an ice bath to cool

Mix the lime juice with your custard (homogenize with an immersion blender if you have one) immediately before churning, then follow the instructions of your ice cream machine

Freeze for several hours, or... just eat it? 

Top the finished product with a generous sprinkling of tajín

Laiskonis, showing us the ice cream ropes

Which is all to say that I was extremely excited for the class -- though I did not know exactly what to expect. Would the course be participatory or observational (observational, though with many opportunities for Q&A)? Who else takes ice cream classes (savory chefs now exploring pastry, and lots of amateur cooks who just love ice cream)? How much ice cream will we be tasting, or, should I have eaten dinner first (A LOT of ice cream, so definitely not)? Will Chef Laiskonis be annoyed at how many questions I have (...hopefully they were good questions)?

I learned more in four hours than I could conceivably summarize in this blog post, and subtle lessons will bubble up in small ways over time through other ice cream writings. Here are just a few of my big takeaways, and a few random and unexpected insights from an evening with one of the ice cream greats:

1. I (and We) have a lot left to learn

Food science in general is still pretty young--the most thorough references are at most about 30 years old, with Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking" published in 1984. Today a number of major research projects seek to catalog the state of today's knowledge, but this is a challenge for an industry that has evolved much more through practice than through dedicated research, per se. For ice cream, as for most foods, most of the knowledge that we have gained has been wrapped up in the minds of ice cream shop owners and, to some extent, in industry textbooks. Neither has been particularly accessible to the home chef. 

Chocolate ice cream, two ways: one with cocoa powder, and one with Laiskonis’ own bittersweet chocolate

Beyond the decentralization of knowledge, there are also many poorly understood cooking phenomena. One of the questions I was most eager to get Chef Laiskonis' take on was about caramel. One of my favorite recipes of all time comes from David Lebovitz: a salted butter caramel ice cream that is distinguished in part by its butter content, but also by the fact that all its sugar is, well, caramelized. This ice cream remains remarkably soft in the freezer, even after days spent there (it isn't likely to last much longer than that without being eaten).

So I asked: what exactly does caramelization do to ice cream consistency, and why? And the answer I got was: basically (beyond what I had already observed, with respect to softness) no one knows. It turns out that caramel is in fact even more poorly understood (and more fascinating) than I would have imagined possible given its relative ubiquity. I smell a delicious, sticky research project in the future...

But my takeaway here was that a lot of fairly basic questions remain to be answered, and there is a meaningful opportunity even for laypeople like me to contribute to pushing the boundaries of ice cream understanding.

2. Do not fear the stabilizers and emulsifiers

Laiskonis talks about stabilizers and emulsifiers like a man who has fielded one too many questions about whether such ingredients taint the purity of ice cream. In fact, many of these substances are quite tame--what you buy in the store (xanthan gum, carrageenan, guar gum--the list goes on) is typically just a pure version of a chemical that naturally occurs in plants.

Without getting into the details (for now), the value of stabilizers is in improved consistency in the short term, and improved shelf life in the long term. Stabilizers help preserve an emulsion even under temperature and phase change, which makes ice cream more resilient to going in and out of freezers. It also makes them melt more slowly. 

Emulsifiers, more broadly, help water and fat molecules live together in harmony. Usually--like oil and vinegar in salad dressing--they prefer to be apart. In ice cream, there is a lot of water and a lot of fat. In order to maintain smoothness, they need a mediator that can speak both their chemical languages. Usually in home ice cream recipes egg yolks play the role of emulsifier, but they also impact the ice cream's flavor--a trade off that many, Laiskonis included, are not willing to make in many cases.

Basically, these complicated-sounding chemicals ARE somewhat complicated, but if you use them appropriately they can do great things for your ice cream. We should not dismiss them out of hand. 

This coconut sorbet may not photograph well, but when tasting it has made everything I have eaten since a little more disappointing

3. Automating recipe creation is hard

After visiting the Carpigiani Gelato University outside Bologna and first reading Laiskonis' summary of ice cream recipe best practices, around August 2014 I set out to make my own ice cream process more scientific. Could I build a tool that would allow the user to merely choose a frozen dessert style and a flavor, press a button, and have an excellent recipe ready to go? This seemed like a question worthy of my attention.

I built an initial Excel spreadsheet to start experimenting, which featured some basic ingredient information gathered from Carpigiani and Laiskonis. Now when I need to add a new ingredient I search the USDA Food Nutrition Database (which you can also just download) and sometimes measure sugar content directly using a refractometer (mostly for fruit). 

This raspberry ice cream changed the way I feel about raspberries and ice cream and just life, generally

I use that spreadsheet, linked on my “Recipes” page if you’d like to use it, to create all my recipes at this point, but it is clear that the complexities of ice cream in particular do not lend themselves so easily to automation (sorbet more so, but still not quite). There are so many ingredient-dependent flavor and textural complexities that truly 'optimal' ice cream is for the most part only achievable through creative trial and error. A good recipe model helps (Laiskonis mentioned he uses a similar spreadsheet to inform his process), but it is no substitute for knowledge of your ingredients and the complex and nuanced ways in which they interact. For example:

As I mention above, caramelized sugar is no longer just sugar, so it behaves differently

In general, simply balancing for water, sugar, fat, and non-fat milk solids content does not account for heat-driven chemical transformations

Acid (from fruit or otherwise) can denature ice cream proteins and thicken the mixture--so it's best to mix fruit and dairy at the last minute before freezing

While having lots of fat in ice cream is nice, it can also dull other flavors--different fat concentrations will better complement different flavors

Chocolate is different from the other flavors (Laiskonis also runs a chocolate laboratory at ICE, nbd)

Basically, there are many rules and all of them have exceptions. Taking them all into account within a single recipe creation tool... may still theoretically be possible? But it would be *REALLY HARD*.

Laiskonis' ice cream class is a serious bargain at $100 for four hours of instruction. To be honest, $100 for a dozen of the tastiest ice cream scoops in the city would not be such a bad deal in and of itself--the city's most educational frozen dessert tasting menu. 

A photo posted by Churning Man (@churning_man) on Sep 12, 2016 at 8:59pm PDT

I am keeping the Churning Man "Resources" page updated with useful knowledge as I find it. For more from Chef Laiskonis specifically, see his blog at Lucky Peach here. 

Boil water and, once it boils, prepare an ice bath

Heat water and sucrose in a separate pot, stirring, just until sucrose dissolves

Blanch basil and immediate shock in an ice bath

Go ahead and use the same ice bath to chill your syrup, why not? Probably leave the basil in there though to preserve its color

Blend the syrup and basil together

Pour the mixture into a shallow plastic container through a fine mesh sieve, squeezing the basily juices from the blended leaves by pressing the back of a spoon against the sieve

Place the container in your freezer. Check back, fork in hand, after an hour and break up any ice that's begun to form

Continue forking your mixture every thirty minutes or so to break up ice crystals, until you've got a really good thing going on

Sungold tomato sorbet Makes about a pint of savory sorbet

2 full farmers market pints sungold tomatoes (cherry should work too) -- for 375g of puree after food-milling

90g sucrose (white sugar)

45g light corn syrup

5g salt

Seed and skin tomatoes -- I passed mine through the finest screen on my food mill -- leaving only puree

Add remaining ingredients and blend (I use an immersion blender) until sugar is dissolved

Freeze in your ice cream machine (if you make a full quart or more, you may need to chill the mixture in advance)

A photo posted by Churning Man (@churning_man) on Aug 22, 2016 at 8:39pm PDT

Brie ice cream Makes a very decadent quart of ice cream

1 lb triple cream brie (I used a brillat savarin; this one, specifically) -- to yield 300g of non-rind interior cheese

400g whole milk

40g heavy cream

80g sucrose (white sugar)

40g corn syrup

30g non-fat skim milk powder

Ask your local cheesemonger what kind of brie he or she has that would be good in ice cream

After tasting many delicious cheeses for the sake of thoroughness, decide that the triple cream cheese (that the cheesemonger recommended first) was the right choice all along

Thank the cheesemonger, and promise that you will repay his or her kindness by bringing in a sample of your ice cream

Make sure you do not buy enough of the cheese at the store the first time, because that would be too efficient

Return to the store for more cheese the following morning with your tail between your legs and get more cheese

Seriously though: remove the rind from your brie of choice and put the non-rind interior cheese (sounds appetizing, eh?) in a mixing bowl

Mix the milk powder and cream in a separate, appropriately small bowl, with a fork (or even better, a tiny whisk) until you have a smooth paste

Pour paste and all remaining ingredients together into your cheese bowl (all the dairy should be well-chilled)

Use an immersion blender to dissolve the sugar and homogenize the mixture

Immediately freeze the mixture in your ice cream machine

Carry a well-insulated scoop of ice cream to your cheesemonger’s workplace and leave it with a trustworthy coworker because cheesemongers do not start work at 8am. Yeah, you keep your promises

After you have made all three of your frozen desserts, you might as well make pesto, marinara, and this brilliant sauce (which my family affectionately calls "summer pasta" every year when we make it during heirloom tomato season), so that each ice cream has a pasta dish to pair with it. You know, for good measure. Definitely make sure not to take a picture of all three together, but feel free to settle for two (if you are anything like me, you probably took a picture of the tomato sorbet earlier in the week, anyway). The ice cream and granita do pair beautifully, after all.

The quoted tweet there links to this Tasting Table article, which includes this paraphrased two-ingredient recipe for "no-churn" ice cream -- ice cream that does not require an ice cream machine:

Open a 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk

Whip one pint of heavy cream to stiff peaks

Fold the sweetened condensed milk into the heavy cream

Freeze the mixture overnight and enjoy perfectly scoopable ice cream the next day

Now frankly, this sounded too good to be true. But I was intrigued by the possibility and Tasting Table's photo of the end result did look impressively scoopable, so I celebrated National Ice Cream Day (the third Sunday of July, quasi-officially) in part by conducting a simple experiment.

Before I get to the experiment, let's talk about this recipe for a second. Using sweetened condensed milk as a substitute for a traditional ice cream base is not a new idea, it seems, though Tasting Table does not provide a source for its recipe. My own brief investigation turned up a pair of recipes/videos from Everyday Food and Martha Stewart, which are nearly the same as Tasting Table's but for the addition of vanilla extract and bourbon. I also found a New York Times recipe from 2010 that's quite similar.

J. Kenji López-Alt has a more involved approach to no-churn ice cream, also from 2010, over on Serious Eats (unfortunately there isn't an ice cream write-up in his cookbook). In López-Alt's eyes, his version qualifies as ice cream whereas the sweetened condensed milk version, well...

"Sure, I've seen the hacks, and I don't like any of 'em. There are the so-called "magic ice cream" recipes that have you fold whipped cream into an eggless base so that it doesn't form a solid block when you freeze it. There's a real name for fluffy stuff: it's called frozen mousse, and it's more akin to cool whip than real ice cream. I mean, it's called ice cream, not ice fluff, right? Ice cream needs to be dense, and it needs to be rich with egg yolks.” [emphasis López-Alt's]

How does two-ingredient ice cream stack up to so-called "real ice cream" chemically? And why does this process work, rather than simply yielding an unappealing icy mass, like the one López-Alt makes at the beginning of his post?

Courtesy of Michael Laiskonis, some typical ice cream ingredient concentrations are: 55-64% water, 12-16% sugar, 7-16% fat, and 9-12% nonfat milk solids (NFMS). This no-churn, two-ingredient ice cream, on the other hand, is roughly: 37% water, 27% sugar, 19% fat, 17% NFMS. These numbers all decrease by a percentage or two if you include alcohol in the mix, as the Martha Stewart and Everyday Food recipes do. So chemically they are pretty different. But I'm not sure that López-Alt's "frozen mousse" criticism would apply here, since the overrun (percentage of air whipped into the mixture, by volume, relative to the pre-churning volume) for this recipe doesn't seem outrageous. I admittedly did not measure carefully, but with two cups of liquid going in and between two and three coming out in each batch, the overrun is 50% at worst -- which wouldn't be great ('super-premium' ice creams have less than 25% overrun), but also would still squarely be in ice cream territory.

An ice cream machine stirs and freezes simultaneously, minimizing ice crystal size and folding air into the mixture -- thereby creating ice cream’s complex, multi-phase structure. The theory behind this two-ingredient ice cream is that with air already folded in via the whipped cream, stirring is less important because you’ve already created the necessary structure. Having abnormally high concentrations of sugar, fat, and NFMS, mean that (1) less water needs to freeze to bring the mixture into a soft equilibrium, and (2) as a materials scientist friend pointed out, more dissolved solids means more nucleation sites for ice crystals to form, which further reduces their ultimate size.

I did not set out to conduct an experiment; rather, it was born, like so much innovation, out of a particular constraint: we only had one cup of cream. I had to go to the store anyway to get sweetened condensed milk, which I figured the bodega up the street would be able to provide. I was right, but they did not have heavy cream. I did see their aerosol whipped cream though and wondered to myself, could this possibly get even easier?

Yes. Yes it can get even easier.

So I split the sweetened condensed milk in half and eyeballed equivalent volumes of hand-whipped and aerosol-whipped cream into which I could fold the milk. I covered them with cling wrap and put them in similar glass containers so that they would be ready for National Ice Cream Morning.

I was impressed with the results. Sweetened condensed milk adds a distinctive taste of ‘nonfat milk solids’, but it is not a bad taste, per se, and it might be easily overpowered by the addition of other flavors. The hand-whipped cream version was the adults' preference -- sweeter than most ice creams but not overpoweringly so. The addition of another (non-sweet) flavor -- see tweet above, e.g. -- might help mitigate that sweetness further.

From the aerosol can, the ice cream was a bit softer and smoother in the freezer, likely because that cream includes more sugar and stabilizers to boot. The extra sugar also ensured that the ice cream itself was cloying, which my three little brothers (6, 11, 14) did not mind in the slightest, so I fed them the rest a week later. Win/win.

For me the fact that home ice cream machines existed was enough to make me excited to start making ice cream, but I have benefitted more than once from knowing and finding people with unused ice cream machines taking up space in their kitchen, so I know that even having a machine is not always enough to support an ice cream-making habit. And for many, including López-Alt and probably most New York apartment renters, the need for a single-use piece of equipment is a deal-breaker. For these people and more, two-ingredient ice cream is a brilliant workaround, and one that no one should feel guilty about using.

Being home in Portland over the holiday, I was sure to stop into Powell's -- and what did I happen to find, but a whole book of no-churn ice cream recipes using the two-ingredient recipe as a baseline. So if this method appeals to you, go to town. I suspect that for many people, this will be a game changer.

I mentioned at the beginning of this post that this experiment only comprised part of my Ice Cream Day celebration this year. I also took my brothers to eat ice cream at Salt & Straw (their favorite), where I insisted that they eat even more ice cream. They reluctantly obliged.

For most people, even waiting in a relatively long line will feel easier than making frozen treats at home, and there is a certain magic that comes with going out for an ice cream cone. On a personal note, I find it hard to argue, even with Salt & Straw's notoriously long line, when one of the July ice cream specials is foraged berry sherbet.

You need to be careful though, because on a hot day if you eat roughly your body weight in ice cream, you might need to be carried back to the car: