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at Tue, 22 Jun 2004 20:16:21 GMT in >,
(Kate Connally) wrote :

>Alex Rast wrote:
>>
>> at Mon, 21 Jun 2004 18:51:14 GMT in >,
>> (Kate Connally) wrote :
>>
>> >Alex Rast wrote:
>> >
>> >Kate Connally wrote:
>> >> >Why would you have to chisel it out? If it's kept at the
>> >> >proper temperature for ice cream it shouldn't be too hard.
>> >>
>> >> But any time you use any heating device to "soften" ice cream
>> >> (including setting it out on the counter), you're going to get
>> >> uneven heating, and generally some melting.
>> >
>> >That does not really happen. If you do it right
>> >there is no melting, just softening...
>>
>> The edges of the container - closest to the place where the
>> temperature is larger than that of the initial temperature of the ice
>> cream, are inevitably going to heat faster than the center, and if
>> that external temperature is above freezing, they will melt.
>
>Well, that's not what happens.

This is what has happened every time in my experience. I wonder why our
results have been so different?

> Besides, I believe microwaves
>supposedly heat from the inside out.

Didn't "Mythbusters" explode this belief at one point? I can't remember for
sure. IIRC, they stuck a roast in there and found that the outside was
cooked long before the center.
....
>> If you use a microwave, you're going to exaggerate this problem,
>> because a microwave contains hot spots...

>That's why they put turntables in them.

Except that a turntable will create a toroidal "zone" of uneven heating, so
it won't eliminate the problem. You could if you had some device that could
toss the object inside around randomly, sort of like a lottery machine, but
this wouldn't work for anything but light, unbreakable, closed-container or
solid objects.

>> My sister says that a lot of people like to do this. To me, however,
>> this seems like a circuitous method of achieving a texture that you
>> could get using different formulations. I thought from your previous
>> posts, that you preferred the very dense, hard consistency of
>> super-premium, but it seems that this is not so
>
>I never said I preferred hard, just dense! There's a difference.
>I like very dense and rich and cream. But if you (try to) eat it
>in its hard state, just out of the freezer, ... If you hold
>it in your mouth long enough to soften it enough so that you *could*
>taste the flavor and feel the texture, your mouth is so numbed by
>the cold that you still can't taste or feel anything anymore.

IME this is true if you're storing it in a long-term, deep-freeze freezer
(a standalone unit with no refrigerator), storing it at temperatures below
0 F. But in a freezer that's with a refrigerator, set to a milder
temperature range, (20F or so) that's not the case. Nonetheless, super-
premium ice cream IME is still pretty block-solid out of such a freezer,
although it melts pretty readily in the mouth.

>> - that you prefer a texture that more closely
>> approximates that of Italian ice cream (gelato). Given that this is
>> the case, why not make/buy that? If it's exactly the texture of soft
>> serve that you like, why not, in turn, make/buy soft serve?
>
>Well, soft serve is not the same thing - different ingredients
>and lower quality ingredients generally and very limited flavors.
>
>Actually there used to be a cool place here in Pgh.
>where they made their own premium quality ice cream
>with many different flavors...

So in your case it's more a matter of market unavailability than of the
nature of the product itself being inherently lower-quality. That seems to
suggest there's little market for the kind of ice cream you'd prefer. Yet,
based on yourself and other people, I find this hard to believe. I suspect
there's a huge, untapped market for high-quality, high-variety soft-serve.
I wonder why nobody's tapped into it yet?

>> Finally, if you want an
>> even softer consistency, this is a "semifreddo". Same thing applies.
>
>But it's not the same thing!!! I don't want a semifreddo!!!
>It's not ice cream!!!! I want real ice cream that is soft.

I wasn't suggesting that this is what you really wanted. I was just giving
you what I've seen are the range of available textures. You seem to prefer
true soft-serve - softer than gelato, harder than semifreddo.

>> Is there a particular appeal to the process of letting ice cream melt
>> and then stirring it around? I'd like to know what makes people choose
>> this method over simply using the product that has the desired texture
>> at the outset.
>
>Because you can't *get* it at the desired texture to begin
>with! That's what I've been saying all along!...
>
>I love my homemade ice cream best right from the ice
>cream churn.

Yes, this is how you get the texture you like. It's pretty clear based on
your comments that your preferred texture is indeed that straight from the
churn. I agree that good ice cream is hard if not impossible to find
commercially in this consistency. It would appear that to some degree
you're the victim of blindness to a market window.

>> >> >Yeah, if you want to mortgage your house to buy a vanilla bean.
>> >> >Do you know how much those things cost???? Yikes!!!!!
>> >>
>> >> $ 1.59 in the bulk bins at my local co-op. And the beans are
>> >> super-fresh and plump.
>> >
>> >Where the hell do you live????? Vanilla at my local
>> >co-op bulk foods place is outrageously expensive and
>> >they are way cheaper than supermarkets. ...
>>
>> >> Even if they were up at $5-6, I would consider this a relatively
>> >> trivial expense (after all, how much, really, is $5.00?)
>> >
>> >Well, to me it's a lot. Must be nice to be rich.
>>
>> If $5.00 is really so much, why buy ice cream at all?
>
>Duh! Because I like ice cream.
>
>> If you are so hard up
>> for cash that $5.00 is a major expense in an absolute sense instead of
>> just a relative sense, then it would seem to me that getting ice cream
>> at all is a luxury you can't really afford to indulge in.
>
>Oh, give me a break. Because I don't want to waste $5 of
>my precious money on just one of the ingredients of the
>ice cream I shouldn't eat ice cream at all? I just love it
>when people who can afford it tell those of us who can't that
>we should just forego it!

But if you like ice cream, why is the extra expense of $5.00 so unbearable?
After all, a super-premium ice cream itself costs nearly that much, so
clearly $5.00 isn't an impossible expense for you. I'm not actually
advocating that you should forgo ice cream, I'm advocating a different
perspective on whether $5.00 is a waste of precious money. In other words,
to say "getting ice cream at all is a luxury you can't afford to indulge
in" is suggesting that the poverty level where it might be necessary or
productive to consider $5.00 a waste of precious money would be so low that
everyday survival would pose a much more immediate concern than whether you
could have ice cream or not. IMHO, money is only valuable insofar as it
allows us to acquire things that are of value to us, and if we choose to
accept things of lower value in order to retain a greater amount of money
we are making a fool's bargain - convincing ourselves indeed that money has
an absolute intrinsic value.

....
>Well, the whole thing is moot, anyway, because I never make
>plain vanilla ice cream. I prefer fruit flavors in homemade
>ice cream.

Here we come to the crux of the matter. The extra expense of a vanilla bean
might really not bring extra value to you simply because it's not really a
flavour you prefer. In that case, that's the argument I'd have made from
the outset. You don't need to justify your personal preferences on economic
grounds. However, with those preferences in mind, it probably would be
worth your time to seek the best fruit available - something local,
seasonal, produced by a farmer interested in quality, and quite probably
organic. Pay whatever price you need to - although if it's local and
seasonal it'll probably still be cheaper than out-of-season, trucked-in
fruit.

--
Alex Rast

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