I'm a fan of Blue Bell Vanilla Ice Cream but if it's not available HEB 1905 Vanilla is good too. If you're not from the South you've probably never had either of these and I feel sorry for you.

I shop at Costco occasionally so I'll have to try Kirkland's and see how is compares.

Very interesting to hear that others favor eggless ice cream. I picked up a Musso Lussino ice cream maker for $15 a few years ago at a garage sale and when I make ice cream for single use (lol) or an affogato treat, I never use eggs. I always felt a little bad about it because I thought real ice cream must have eggs but I don't eat eggs so I never have them. The ice cream is so much cleaner tasting: using grass fed half and half really shines in an eggless ice cream.

Regarding eggs in custard. You must use a thermometer And mix. A thermomix seems especially suitable but isn't as the blade doesn't mix the layer directly in contact with the heater. So you get an eggy custard. A copper bottomed sauce pan is best and a flat whisk. And be really careful around the 75C mark. Sous vide does it perfectly and my guess is that is what most use today.

Usually one adds 0.5% salt to most bases. It makes the flavor pop. Except for strawberry ice cream which works much better with a few drops of balsamic vinegar and hates salt. An affogato custard would probably fare better without salt but have to try it.

Gums (ice cream stabilizers) retard but don't eliminate ice crystal formation. The usual practice is to move the creams from the dipping cabinet to a deep freezer which freezes both the water content and the sugary custard around the crystals.

Ice cream bases are designed for a temperature. Restaurants don't have dipping cabinets and therefore adjust the AF (anti freeze) properties for -18C while dipping cabinets are usually -12C. To achieve the same sweetness one plays with the ration of real sweet sugars (like fructose) and ones that offer AF but not sweetness (like glucose). This is also how one compensates for alcoholic ice creams - ethanol depressing the AF and this sweetening with fructose or even saccharine to prevent further AF.

Lastly, calorie per cup is a rather silly way to measure ice creams. Cheap ice creams are filled with air (the ratio of cream to air is called overrun). Higher quality ice creams are lower in air content (air is necessary since ice cream is a frozen foam of an emulsion). But the caloric density per cup increases for higher quality ice creams. One can reduce it a bit using sugar alcohols (like xylitol, maltitol etc).

AssafL wrote:Lastly, calorie per cup is a rather silly way to measure ice creams. Cheap ice creams are filled with air (the ratio of cream to air is called overrun). Higher quality ice creams are lower in air content (air is necessary since ice cream is a frozen foam of an emulsion). But the caloric density per cup increases for higher quality ice creams.

It would seem that the scale has a dual purpose when making affogato? (Or perhaps when eating ice cream in general )

I hadn't thought about the varying density of ice cream, nor that a less airy one would necessarily be of higher quality. Thanks for that perspective.

Cheers!

- Jake

You know I kept seeing this thread pop up and I just kept ignoring it. Now that I'm here I find that I'm considering dusting off my ice-cream maker. So much for the waistline...

spressomon wrote:Never had grittiness, per se, with Three Twins but wondering if you might be referring to the ice crystals? Without stabilizers/conditions (typically "gums") ice crystals can develop apart of the transportation process of moving ice cream from where its made to final retail location from temperature differences in temps of refrigerated truck boxes, outside air temps, etc.

Well I tried the Three Twins last night and I'm still put off a bit by the iciness.
I never put eggs or any sorts of stabilizers in the many ice creams I made at home, but now I think maybe some stabilization is necessary for commercial ones to counteract the issues of transportation that were mentioned before. That is something I can't control and seems to be problematic.

I think I'm going to stick with Aldens for now, stabilizers and all:

Organic Milk And Cream, Organic Cane Sugar, Organic Tapioca Syrup, Organic Vanilla Extract, Organic Tapioca Starch, Non-Gmo Soy Lecithin, Guar Gum, Locust Bean Gum, Xanthan Gum, Organic Vanilla Bean Seeds.

LBIespresso wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/dini ... panna.html

Just happened to walk by here today and it was opening day. Lucky me! The place is very nice inside and was very busy. I had the classico. Definitely worth the trip. Now I need to up my home affogato game!

The only downside is this is in the location of one of my old go to sushi places. Oh well...progress.

Jake_G wrote:It would seem that the scale has a dual purpose when making affogato? (Or perhaps when eating ice cream in general )

- Jake

Scale? Heresy, winter is close... one needs preparing for the hard times
after all practice makes perfect