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Ice Cream Freezer (Few general directions are not)

A few general directions are not out of place. Good ice cream can only be secured from good material, and one-half the quantity of cream should be scalded to prevent too much swelling. When natural fruit flavorings are used, they should be mashed and added when the dasher is removed and the beating is given with a wooden spoon.

All the ingredients should be ice-cold before being mixed and placed in the freezer. Have ready an ample supply of ice, and one-third as much coarse or rock salt as there is ice, place the mixture to be frozen into the freezer, adjust the handle and then pack with alternate layers of ice and salt. Freeze slowly and evenly.

Before removing the lid to take out the dasher scrape away all the mixture of salt and ice, so that no salt water may drip into the half-frozen mixture; remove the dasher and beat as described above; replace the lid, put a cork in the hole at the top and repack the can, using less salt than in the first packing. Be sure that all water is drained off before this second packing. Cover with paper, then with a blanket or carpet, and let it ripen for not less than two hours. The frozen mixture will not acquire the mellow flavor before this time elapses.

The best ice cream is secured by the use of pure cream one-half scalded and one-half uncooked. Where a custard is made from milk, cornstarch, etc., it is a frozen custard and not ice cream in the true sense of the word. Sherbet is a water-ice stirred rapidly while it is freezing, so that it looks white, like frozen snow, when it is finished.

A sorbet is a water-ice with the white of an egg and a teaspoonful of sugar beaten together and added to the frozen mixture when the dasher is removed. A parfait is merely frozen whipped cream, and a mousse is practically the same.

After becoming expert at making ice cream, try your hand at serving it in fancy molds. It is well to begin on the common rick or cylinder, and then experiment on fancy shapes. The trick lies in very quick, tight packing of the molds and the deft, skillful turning out of the shapes at serving time. Freeze the cream firm and solid, have a rather shallow tub over which you can bend easily, cover the bottom to the depth of about 4 inches with cracked ice and rock salt. Chill the molds, pack them quickly with the frozen cream and cover the seams between molds and lid with strips of cotton cloth dipped in melted paraffine. This prevents the entrance of salty water into the molds.

As fast as a mold is filled, pack it into the ice and cover them all with cracked ice, 3 parts, and coarse salt i part. When serving, hold the mold under running cold water, wipe it off carefully, remove the paraffine paper, open the mold and shake out the frozen figure. If the cream sticks, wipe off the mold quickly with a cloth dipped in hot water. A dainty service of cream frozen in individual molds will attract people to your store. Charge a price that will cover the cost and time and you will soon realize that it has advertised you as a progressive man.

Fruit in Ice Cream.

Just now ice cream in which fruit flavors figure are the favorites. In some the small fruits are frozen whole, in others they are pounded to a jam before going into the freezer and in others are used rather as a sauce for vanilla ice cream than as a part of the frozen mixture itself. It goes without saying that the trick of freezing fruits whole in the cream is the work of a novice. No one who has ever encountered a piece of ice such as a frozen strawberry makes would be guilty of preparing such an unpleasant surprise for anyone else. For a genuine "strawberries and cream" ice cream perhaps this rule will be dependable as any you can find: Have two quarts of berries, hulled and perfectly clean, mash and press through a sieve, then sweeten with loaf sugar powdered. Add three pints of milk, one quart of cream, and if you are not weighted down by prejudice in the matter of food colorings, a bit of vegetable carmine coloring.

But if you would have iced strawberries hull and wash them and measure for your use two-thirds their amount of sugar. Fill then a dish with alternate layers of the berries and the sugar; over all pour a gill of pineapple syrup; cover the dish tightly, pack in ice and salt for a time and then serve with whipped cream. Raspberries, too, may be iced according to this suggestion, but they will not require as much sugar as the strawberries need. Also, by way of toning them up a bit for raspberries have a dim individualitya little brandy instead of a fruit juice might be poured over them. Though this is a matter for the individual to settle.

This was meant, however, for a story of ice cream, so we will not stray further from the text. As a rule in talking of ice creams it is only necessary to make suggestions. Among experienced cream-makers it is not necessary to give explicit rules from start to finish, but rather to ask, for instance, "Have you, in making caramel ice cream, ever tried adding to it some chopped pistachios and some candied orange peel chopped to the finest bits possible?" The answer to which in most cases will be in the negative, with the comment that it had never been heard of. And yet the combination is so happy that it deserves to be well known.

And speaking of pistachios in ice cream for the purpose of giving it character or flavor, they do a splendid work in both directions when used in banana ice cream. Some persons you know are very fond of bananas, and naturally they take to ice cream made of that fruit. And they will take to it more firmly still, in most cases, with some very finely chopped pistachios figuring in it. Usually the bananas are cooked in a little milk with sugar, then pressed through a sieve when they have added to them the yolks of two or three eggs, according to the amount of bananas used, after which the cream and milk in equal quantities are added, and then the freezing takes place. Most delicate in all its intents and purposes is a melon ice cream. Scrape out the soft center of a cantaloupe, press through a colander and add to it milk and cream in equal quantities with the sugar that seems necessary. In serving, the obviously proper receptacle will be the rinds of the melons. If you are to make macaroon ice cream it will be a helpful thing to set the macaroons in the oven to dry considerably before trying to grate them. Then the grating seems like play and is likewise successful. But they should be sifted before using. Have ready a frozen vanilla ice cream, into it stir the macaroons, pack into a mold and set deeply into a pail filled with ice and salt. There let it remain for two hours at least-three or four would be better. 408 409 205 207 208 308 307 305