Upping Your Ice Cream Game
If you love coconut ice cream, there’s never enough coconut— until you make your own. Toasted coconut, dark chocolate and almonds. Call it an amped-up Almond Joy. While making your own used to mean laying in ice and salt supplies and cranking by hand, today’s appliances avoid all that and can fit on a counter. You can easily spend $700 on a fancy Italian model, but success also is available in a lower price range.
The process involves chilling at temperatures below freezing. (Hence the salt-and-ice mixtures of old methods.) The Whynter ICM-200LS has its own refrigerating compressor, meaning you can pour in the chilled crème anglaise (sweetened custard sauce) and the machine will turn out firm ice cream—as much as you want all day long. The cover has a door for adding the mix-ins. The machine keeps the mixture cold for 30 minutes. It performed flawlessly and is easy to clean. The Whynter ($270, on sale) weighs 24 pounds and makes up to 2.1 quarts. It takes up a bit of counter space. The biggest problem is getting the ice cream off the churn paddle.
If you have sufficient freezer space, can plan ahead and want to spend less, the Cuisinart Frozen Yogurt-Ice Cream & Sorbet Maker (ICE-21) is a lighter option that costs $70. Rather than providing its own cooling, it requires freezing an insulated mixing bowl overnight, which works for one batch, about 1.5 quarts of ice cream. The churning blade doesn’t quite reach the inner walls of the bowl and ice cream gets left behind unless you pause to scrape it down. A bother. The pro move is to buy an extra bowl ($40) so you can make two batches, raising the price to $110.
With any machine, ice cream should be frozen for at least another four hours, preferably overnight. This helps it “ripen,” meaning that the ice crystals bind with the butterfat to create density. And your ice cream will taste even better. Now, for some espresso gelato. With mucho espresso!
