Frozen Dessert Types and Qualities

Types of frozen desserts
as recipes/individual methods are posted, ice cream headings will be turned into links

Ice Cream – A frozen dessert consisting of milk and/or cream, sugar, flavorings and sometimes eggs. The unfrozen ice cream is called “batter” and is prepared and then chilled before churning and freezing. Ice creams are churned by machine or by hand and are served either soft (directly after churning) or hard (frozen for several hours after churning).

American Traditional/Philadelphia-Style Ice Cream – churned ice cream containing no eggs.

French Style Ice Cream – churned ice cream containing egg yolks, prepared in the manner of Crème Anglaise.

Ice – crushed ice that is drizzled with sweetened, flavored syrup or fruit juice.

Ice Milk – v. low fat churned ice cream made with whole or low-fat milk, containing no eggs or other additional fats.

Gelato – churned Italian ice cream made with whole milk, sometimes with egg whites and never with cream. characterized by a v. light, smooth texture and quick melting.

Granite – mixture of water, sugar, fruit juice or other flavoring that is frozen in shallow pans and occasionally agitated but not churned. characterized by the bright texture of large ice crystals.

Semifreddo – a light-textured semi-frozen dessert. includes ice cream cakes, frozen custards, some fruit tarts and ice cream sandwiches made brioche or pastry.

Sorbetto – a churned dessert of water, fruit/fruit juice and sugar. contains no milk, cream or eggs.

Sherbet – fruit ice cream.

Frozen Yogurt – low fat churned ice cream with yogurt in place of higher-fat dairy products.


Qualities

smoothness – texture determined by ice crystal size.
small crystals = smooth texture, large crystals = coarse texture

ice creams are frozen rapidly while being constantly agitated (churned), creating small ice crystals. uniformly small crystal size maintained by proper storage at a consistent, sub-freezing degree.

granites are frozen slowly with occasional agitation, forming large crystals

overrun – during the churning process, air is incorporated into the freezing batter, resulting in an increase in volume. the difference in volume between the un-churned batter and the final product is expressed as a percentage of the original volume.

e.g. A batter that increases from 1 C unchurned to 1.5 C frozen product would be said to have 50% overrun.

In commercial production, ice creams run the gamut from 20% overrun (premium ice creams) to 100% overrun (lower grade or dietic ice creams).

mouth feel – the mouth feel of an ice cream product is described by its richness, speed of melting and smoothness. The primary factors in mouth feel of a product is the fat content, the inclusion of emulsifiers (eggs or plant gums) and the products overrun percentage. Generally, high fat products are heavier and richer in feel and melt slowly; low fat products are lighter and melt more quickly.

storage – ice cream products should be stored at a consistently sub-freezing temperature and not allowed to melt and refreeze, which causes large, uneven crystals to form.