[penguicon-general] Liquid Nitrogen IceCream

[Rob Landley]

On Tuesday 27 February 2007 8:17 am, john guest wrote:
> You know, we could do some of the more esoteric Japanese flavors, like
> green tea or ginger, but I'm thinking squid just isn't going to go
> over well.  :-)  But wasabi/tamari ice cream?  Yum.  :-)

Somewhere I have the big list of flavors we worked out for Linucon.  (Mark 
knows lots of this, recruit him to help.)

Basic recipe is:

6 cups milk/cream (any ratio you like, half and half is cheaper than cream).  
We generally did 4 cups half and half (that's a 1-quart container) and 2 cups 
milk.
2 cups sugar.
2 teaspoons vanilla.
2 eggs (optional, either use a whisk or mix with the sugar _before_ adding the 
milk)
Flavoring ingredient.
3 liters liquid nitrogen.  (5 for chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, and oreo.)

Any frozen concentrated juice works as a flavoring ingredient.  Just dump in 
the whole can and stir it up.  (Including grape, fruit punch, cranberry...  
heck, even grapefruit worked.)  If you do orange, double the vanilla and 
you've got orange julius.  We traditionally put in a higher percentage of 
cream (pure half-and-half) when using limeade, no real reason. :)  Apple 
foams like a detergent for some reason, so be careful when adding the LN2 and 
stirring.

Some flavoring ingredients qualify as a sweetner and you use 1 cup of them and 
only 1 cup of sugar.  Honey works well, but you need a whisk to mix it.  Real 
maple syrup also works (not the fake stuff), and when we forgot to reduce the 
sugar the 13-year old catgirls we fed it to at the Anime convention _really_ 
liked it and we sent them ricocheting out into the rest of the con with no 
remorse whatsoever.  Both of these foam a bit.  (All 3 if you include the 
teenage catgirls after eating over-sugared maple ice cream.)

"Big train" brand chai powder works _marvelously_.

If you have soda syrups, treat them like juice concentrate.  (We got a bottle 
of Dr. Pepper syrup from the Dr. Pepper museum and it made MARVELOUS Dr. 
Pepper ice cream.  No idea what the open colas would do.  I have no idea 
where to get mountain dew syrup.)

The turkish coffee worked pretty well, ask the turkish coffee guy about that.  
He gave me a cup full of some black gritty liquid and I dumped it in the 
batch and people ate it.

The caffeinated flavor syrups we had last year worked fine.

Normal juice doesn't work (waters down too much).  Neither do jams or jellies 
(you can't taste 'em).  Pudding mix yields a somewhat disturbing texture as 
the ice cream melts, best avoided except in combination with other things.

Fresh fruit works fine but you need a blender.  If you have fresh mint throw 
it in the blender with the sugar, and then rinse out the pitcher with the 
milk; it's _marvelous_.  Use lots.  If you make kiwi, PEEL THE KIWIS before 
putting them into the blender.  (Ask Mark about this.)

Cheesecake ice cream is great if you can get cheesecake flavored bagel spread; 
pure cream cheese is a bit blah (it's ok, use a whisk).

Mark did a "birthday cake" ice cream (that I personally found way too sweet), 
he can tell you how.

For chocolate chocolate chocolate and oreo, use 1/3 to 1/2 a container of 
unsweetened cocoa powder (we generally get nestle but it's all the same), 1/3 
to 1/2 a bottle of chocolate syrup (hershey's special dark if they have it, 
otherwise strandard hershey's), one large (or two small) boxes of jello 
chocolate instant pudding mix, and an entire bag of smashed up oreos (we've 
done half a bag at times but a full bag's better).  Getting this to freeze 
is "interesting" (behold the power of liquid nitrogen).  It's also a 
tradition that we don't measure _anything_ when we make this, even the sugar 
and milk and vanilla are all approximate.  This one doesn't particularly need 
the eggs for extra body. :)

Rob
-- 
"Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but
when there is no longer anything to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery