It’s another week, and that means it’s time for another instalment of
400 FLAVOURS
These three recipes use bases from Salt & Straw cookbook, which mostly uses xanthan gum as the stabilizer. Is it better than corn starch, cream cheese, or egg yolks? Let’s take a look…
Recipe 004: Cranberry-Orange Ice Cream
In another case of “what’s in the fridge to use up?”, we had half a bag of cranberries that’d been sitting in the freezer for quite a while. I wanted to add another dimension to the flavour, so I added orange zest for the classic cranberry-orange combo.
Cranberry syrup:
Ingredients:
206 grams cranberries (half of a bag from the freezer, defrosted)
200 grams sugar
2/3 cup water
Instructions:
Mix the sugar and cranberries in a saucepan. Mash em a bit to break the skin.
Add the water, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer on medium-low heat for 25 minutes.
Give em some more mashing if you feel like it, but be careful with the hot syrup.
Strain in a fine metal seive, pushing to get more of the juice out.
Let the syrup cool, then refrigerate for a few hours. Use the syrup within 24 hours or so, I dunno how safe it is long term in your fridge.
Salt & Straw 17% Butterfat Base:
Ingredients:
0.5 cup granulated sugar
2 tbsp nonfat dry milk powder
¼ tsp xanthan gum
1.5 cup whole milk
2 tbsp light corn syrup
1.5 cup heavy cream, very cold
Instructions:
Mix together the sugar, milk powder, and xanthan gum in a small bowl.
In a medium pot, mix the corn syrup and whole milk and stir.
Add the sugar mixture to the pot and whisk vigorously until smooth.
Put pot over medium heat, stirring often, until sugar has dissolved, about 2 minutes. Turn down heat if mixture starts to simmer.
Remove pot from heat and add cream, stirring until fully combined.
Let mixture cool (if not already cooled), then put in airtight container in the fridge.
Let mixture chill in fridge for at least six hours.
And putting it all together:
Ingredients:
Syrup from above
Base from above
½ cup water
1 medium orange
Instructions:
Zest the orange into the base and return to fridge.
Let base infuse for half an hour.
Realize syrup has set into more of a jelly, probably from all that pectin.
Add the half cup water to “syrup” in a mixing bowl and whisk to thin it.
Add thinned syrup to base, , whisk to combine, and churn for 20-30 minutes.
Transfer to chilled container and freeze overnight.
TASTING RESULTS: Lighter and fluffier than the Jeni’s base I normally make. It’s up to your taste if that’s actually better or not. The orange is an equal partner to the cranberry, despite how much more cranberry mass is in there. The power of zest!
WORTH MAKING: Totally. You may want to try adding the syrup to the base, mixing well, and then chilling it all, and seeing if that makes the result totally smooth; I still had tiny bits of cranberry jam in mine.
Recipe 005: Bubblegum Ice Cream
This was a bit of a swing. I wanted to do something silly, and saw some little bags of mini chiclets at the supermarket: so, bubblegum ice cream time. I didn’t have a premixed bubblegum flavour on hand, so I searched and found a post of Dana Cree’s recipe from Hello, My Name Is Ice Cream.
Bubblegum ice cream:
Ingredients:
1 tsp artificial vanilla extract
1 tsp banana extract
½ tsp orange extract
½ tsp lemon extract
A plastic box of strawberries (this is gonna be finicky)
2 little bags mini chiclets or other tiny gum pieces, 45g or to preference
Instructions:
Mix all the extracts together in a small bowl or cup.
Cut out the stems and inner white areas of the strawberries.
Blend the strawberries in a food processor.
Strain the strawberry mush, pushing it to get the juice out of the pulp.
Add the extract and strawberry goop (I got 5.5 tbsp) to the base from above, stirring well to incorporate everything consistently.
Churn for 15-20 minutes.
Right as churning is almost complete, pour in gum pieces and let the machine mix it in (I also stirred it with a long spoon, but be careful not to get in the way of the machine).
Transfer to chilled container and freeze overnight.
TASTING RESULTS: When I sampled it pre-freezing, I was worried. It tasted too mecidinal, like the bubblegum floride wash at the dentist. But once frozen, it works well! Very Bazooka Joe taste, and the small bits of gum aren’t distracting or shocking in the chew.
WORTH MAKING: Yeap, but do yourself a favour and just get the bubblegum flavour extract to keep things short.
Recipe 006: Cucumber-Strawberry Sorbet
This sherbert base uses a bit more xanthan gum, so it’s pretty goopy, like slime for a homemade monster movie.
Sorbet base:
Ingredients:
1.5 cups granulated sugar
1.5 cups water
¾ tsp xanthan gum
¼ cup plus 2 tbsp (so 6 tbsp total) light corn syrup
Instructions:
Stir the sugar and xanthan gum together in a small bowl.
In a small saucepan, stir the water and corn syrup together until the syrup is dissolved.
Add the sugar & xanthan mixture and whisk fast until well combined and pretty smooth.
Put saucepan over medium heat, stirring and lowering heat if simmering starts, until the sugar is fully dissolved (about 3 minutes).
Take off heat and let cool to room temperature.
Put in sealed container in fridge and chill for at least 4 hours.
Cucumber-strawberry sorbet:
Ingredients
2 cups strawberries, hulled (leaves and dense white top bits removed)
½ medium english cucumber, unpeeled, roughly chopped
1 tbsp lemon juice, preferably fresh
½ tsp kosher salt
2 cups of chilled sorbet base (the recipe above makes about 2.5 cups, I haven’t figured out what to do with that last half cup yet)
Instructions:
Puree the cucumber, strawberries, lemon juice, salt, and water into a smoothie consistency.
Strain in a fine mesh strainer, pressing solids to get more juice out.
Discard solids.
Mix in chilled sorbet base.
Churn in machine for 20 to 30 minutes, until texture is like a slushie.
Transfer to chilled container and freeze overnight.
TASTING RESULTS: The flavour is nice. It’s refreshing, and tastes kinda like watermelon candy. But the xanthan gum is much more noticeable here, unlike in the butterfat base, and it ends up a bit slimy. I don’t think it’s the worst, but you’d want some way of dealing with it, a drink or something. Dear husband Gerald recommended having a big scoop as a float in some lemon-lime soda, and that sounds perfect.
WORTH MAKING: I think so, as part of a balanced dessert plan. Really excellent flavour.
Thanks for reading, and let me know if you try any of these recipes. Send me your questions, requests, flavour suggestions! Every week I’ll be posting one (or two, or three) more recipes, until we reach….