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Heavy Cream, Light Cream, Ice Cream

14 years ago

I want to make coffee ice cream. Coffee fudge swirl, actually, but the fudge swirl part isn't relevant to my question. The recipe calls for light cream, and all I have is skim milk and heavy cream. So I thought I'd combine them to get the correct fat percentage. I looked it up, and supposedly heavy cream is 36% fat and light cream is 18 to 30%. So I should be good if I mix the nonfat milk and the heavy cream half and half, shouldn't I? Or am I overlooking something obvious?

I came up with the right answer in that thread about tart pan sizes, but my process for getting to it was revealed as somewhat primitive, so I don't want to mess this up because of shoddy math.

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Comments (7)

lindac
14 years ago
I think it'll work....anyhow....how bad could it be? I have made skim milk "ice cream"....still was better than any store version!
Linda C
Lars
14 years ago
Since light cream can be up to 30% fat, I would use 2/3 cream and 1/3 milk. Actually, if I were making it myself, I would decrease the milk even more, since milk upsets me more than cream. I made strawberry ice cream Tuesday using a recipe that called for light cream, and I substituted all heavy cream. I took some to work because I can't eat all of it, and I thought DB didn't want it, but then after he had some yesterday, he decided it was very good. For myself, the most milk I would put it would be about 1/8 portion. I haven't noticed a problem with using all heavy cream, except that it did get very fluffy and I was afraid it would going to climb out of my ice cream machine, and so I ate little bits of it as it was going along. The worst thing that will happen is you will have excess volume, and you might want to make sure your ice cream maker will handle it. Everyone at work loved it.

Lars
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You can also do it the really old fashioned way -- the same method that has long been used to make sorbet. Just pour the mixture into a baking dish, and set that into your freezer. Also, you will need a heavy glass or metal bowl, an electric hand mixer, and a bowl of ice big enough for the first bowl to sit in. Put the heavy glass or metal bowl and the beater attachments for the hand mixer into the freezer at the same time as the ice cream mix to chill them. When its almost but not quite fully frozen, use a fork to break it up into small lumps about the size of a nickle or a little less. Then put it back into the freezer about 10 minutes to set up a bit again. Now, working as quickly as possible, take the pre-chilled heavy bowl out of the freezer,and set it in a bath of ice cubes in the 2nd larger bowl. Quickly transfer the ice cream mixture into the chilled bowl, and beat it as much as possible with the electric mixer ONLY until the lumps are broken up, and it begins to whip up a bit. Then, back into the freezer for another 15 to 30 minutes, until its not at all "melty" but still a little soft. Repeat the beating/whipping process several times -- the idea is to whip as much air into it to make it creamy and fluffy as possible, without melting it too much at each whipping. The chilled bowl, the ice bath, and the chilled beaters help, but beware that the very act of beating it creates friction between the bowl and beaters, which makes heat, so this process is a balancing act between beating in air and melting the ice cream. Done right, which isn't at all hard to do with just a little practice, this method does work, albeit it will never be quite as fluffy as commercial ice creams you are used to, which not only incorporate a large volume of air into the mix using specialized equipment, but which also generally use gums and stabilizers which prevents the product from melting and turning liquid as fast as a pure, cream and milk only product will. Good luck.
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RECIPE: Whipping cream for ice cream
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Yes.
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LOOKING for: ice-cream w/o whipping cream or scmilk?
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What a great idea! It's frozen yogurt but with lots of good fruit in it. The yogurt would give it the body it needs without the fat. I think you could try fat-fee sour cream, too: that might be less tangy than the yogurt. Fat free sour cream, since it's made with skim milk, is thickened with something else, probably carageenan. Any fat-free half and half would also have a substitute thickener.Some thickeners hold up to freezing and some don't. There's a lot of difference between brands in how sour they are: you might have to try a few. I use half fat-free yogurt and half fat-free sour cream for many sauces. I tried making ice milk with plain milk, and it didn't work out. Not enough body. I meant to repeat it using something thicker, but haven't yet. I've been thinking about fat-free evaporated milk; that would have more body to it. Let us know what you try and what works!
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Comments (2)
If your recipe calls for milk also, think of the light cream as half heavy, half milk, and use more of it and less milk. It would be pretty close.
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Lars
14 years ago
I forgot to mention that when you increase the percentage of fat, the ice cream will be softer. I also forgot to mention that my freezer is at minus 10Â°. The ice cream I made never got completely hard, which made it easier to serve, but if you ice cream maker is not cold enough, you may end up with a soft-serve type of ice cream. There was water in my recipe, from the strawberries and lemon juice, but probably not a whole lot.

Anyway, how did yours turn out?

Lars
lyndaluu2
14 years ago
I don't even use cream in my sorbet and ice cream...I use non-fat homemade yogurt. I like it better and it's not as fatting.

Linda
hawk307
14 years ago
Maureen:
Just do what you were thinking.
Lou
maureen_me
Original Author
14 years ago
Sorry I didn't respond sooner. I made the base yesterday evening and then chilled it overnight. Made the ice cream today. It was pretty soupy coming out of the machine--and I had tilted the proportions in favor of heavy cream to skim milk--but it firmed up somewhat in the freezer afterward. Could just have been that it was really warm and humid here today.

Somehow I managed to seize up the chocolate fudge I made, though, which corrupted the ice cream and got it all grainy. Maybe I shouldn't have tried speeding up the thickening process by putting that in the freezer.

I've made this exact combo before, and it came out perfect. Go figure. Except that time I had light cream on hand, so no futzing with proportions.

Oh, well, live and learn. Some days you scream FOR ice cream, and some days you scream AT it. Thanks for the helpful suggestions.
petaloid
14 years ago
Lars shared some of his strawberry ice cream with me and it turned out so well that it is now in my brain's taste-memory catalogue. I loved how the richness of the heavy cream balanced with the strawberry and lemon flavors of the recipe.

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