I'll See You on the Dark Side of the Ice Cream

Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams.  If you've never heard of it, I feel fairly confident when I say that you likely will soon.  I can't imagine the ice cream world is an easy one to break into on a national level, but it seems that Jeni Britton Bauer is poised to do just that.  Bauer opened a shop in Columbus, OH, that eventually failed, but she refused to give up and opened a new one a little while later and that one most definitely did not fail.  In fact, it has lead to a total of 9 shops in Ohio, 2 in Tennessee and national distribution for her products.  Not only does she make great ice cream, but she makes creative and interesting ice cream.  Ingredients include goat cheese, roasted cherries, sweet corn, buttermilk, beets, cucumber and plenty more.  But even if you don't live in Ohio or Tennessee or near one of the distribution areas, you can still see what all the hubbub is about by making some for yourself (that's right...I said, "hubbub").

In June of this year, Jeni published her very first book detailing how she does what she does.  If you're a fan of ice cream, which you should be, it's well worth your $15, so go buy it here and I'll wait...

Is this the first book ever published on making ice cream at home?  Yes.

Oh wait, I meant no, it certainly is not.  There are other good books out there including one from a couple of guys that I'm sure were inspirational to Jeni Bauer at one point in her life, Ben & Jerry.  The big difference you'll see with this book though is that none of the recipes call for eggs.  Most of the ice cream books that I own teach you how to make frozen custard.  They don't SAY that's what they're teaching you, but, if you want to get technical about it, that's what you're making when you freeze an egg-based mixture.  Don't get me wrong, this technique can and does allow for an extremely tasty end product, but I was curious about Jeni's egg-free technique and there are a couple of interesting twists.

The list of non-standard ingredients include cornstarch, corn syrup and cream cheese and they ARE in there with a purpose.  Your standard frozen custard-style ice cream contains eggs because eggs thicken up your ice cream base, which results in a creamier ice cream.  The eggs really don't overwhelm the other flavors, but you are cooking them a bit (and you have to be careful not to let them scramble in there...you'll not win any ribbons at the county fair with scrambled egg ice cream), so they do add a certain "egginess" that might mask some more delicate flavors.

So you need to thicken your ice cream base, but you don't want those emulsifying bastards we know as eggs in there...what to do?  Yes, I'll end the suspense now: this is where the cornstarch and cream cheese come into play.  If you've ever made Chinese food at home, you likely used cornstarch (or maybe arrowroot) to thicken up your sauce in the final steps.  It does the same thing here and it results in a soft, creamier ice cream.  The cream cheese contributes the same kind of thing.

The corn syrup is really just another type of sugar, but it has a tendency to crystalize less than regular old sugar...again, less crystals means smoother, less icy ice cream, which is a good thing!

I've made frozen custard-style ice cream many times and it's great, but it does tend to get icy in the freezer pretty quickly.  Jeni's techniques really do eliminate that issue, so I'm a fan.  I made a super dark chocolate version (recipe to follow in a separate post...oh, wait, it's right here!), but you can pretty much adapt any ice cream recipe to work with this technique.  And if you pick up the book, you'll have lots of recipes to experiment with, so get at it and bring me over all of your excess!  DO IT NOW!!!