December 2021 - ADI Electro Freeze Ohio - Frozen Dessert Equipment

3 Secrets for Creating the Best Soft Serve Ice Cream

Start With the Best

Combine the best ingredients with the best equipment and you’ve got a good chance at making the best ice cream. Like how the quality of your water affects the taste of your morning coffee, good quality dairy, sugars, and flavorings can bolster the taste of ice cream. Think of it as the more flavor the ingredients have to offer, the more your ice cream has to work with.

A good machine also plays a part. Events have to happen in a certain order and at certain temperatures for a batch to turn out well, and if a machine can’t deliver, then your ice cream will suffer. ADI Electro Freeze soft serve machines deliver consistently smooth ice cream with traditional and low-fat mixes.

Freeze It Fast

Temperature plays a big part in ice cream recipes because it affects the creaminess of the batch. Ice cream is filled with ice crystals, and the smaller they are, the creamier the ice cream. Chill the ice cream fast and hard in a subzero freezer or try putting the ice cream in small, shallow containers instead of one large one. That way the cold can reach the center faster.

It also pays to keep air out of your containers. Air gives the moisture room to move around. If it evaporates and collects inside the container, those larger ice crystals have room to start forming up. If you find yourself with lots of empty headroom, cover the ice cream with plastic wrap or parchment paper before putting the lid on, to keep air out.

Keep It Ice (Cream) Cold

This might seem obvious, but ice cream melts. And once it’s refrozen, those ice crystals refreeze in larger clusters, making ice cream grainy and unpleasant. But it’s also a good idea to cool your mix before it’s actually ice cream. Keeping your ingredients cold means they won’t have to go through any temperature fluctuations that affect their quality or taste.

Flavorings also lose their strength in warm mixtures and churning a warm mixture means the temperature has further to drop, keeping it from freezing quickly. Also chilling your bowls can help the churning process along, especially if you have a small, at-home machine. Just make sure you start the bowl moving before you pour your mix in. There’s a chance it will freeze to one spot of the bowl instead of churning properly.

Making creamy ice cream requires precision. With the right ingredients, good timing, and a dependable machine, anyone can make their own favorite flavors. Learn more about ADI Electro Freeze ice cream machines so you can start your own delicious adventure.

So you’ve mastered your vanilla soft serve recipe and now you’re looking to add more variety to your soft serve line-up. Fruity ice creams are always a hit with the customers, as they’re cool and refreshing, marrying the tangy sweetness of fruit to the comforting deliciousness of vanilla and cream. But how do you use fruit in a soft serve ice cream maker? Read on to uncover the basics of making fruity soft serve flavors.

4 Rules for Using Fruit in a Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker

1. Don’t Use Whole Fruit

You may be thinking that making fruit soft serve is a simple as adding cut-up fruit to your vanilla ice cream base, but that would be a big mistake. Fruits have a high water content, which means that using fruit whole in your soft serve will result in icy chunks of fruit disrupting your smooth, creamy soft serve. Not only is this an unpleasant eating experience, but it can also be dangerous! If you want your customers to keep their teeth, don’t use whole fruits.

2. Using Frozen Fruit

Using frozen fruit may be the easiest way to add fruit into your soft serve. Following the first rule, it’s essential that you don’t use the frozen fruit whole. Even though it’s been frozen, this fruit still has a high water content and poses the same danger to your customer’s teeth if used whole. Instead, frozen fruit needs to be macerated in order to be safe to use in soft serve.

When using frozen fruit, we recommend using berries, such as blueberries or raspberries, as they retain the most flavor when frozen. To macerate your fruit, place 24 oz of berries in a container, then add around 1 cup of sugar. You may need to adjust the recipe to ensure you’re not over-sugaring your product. Mix the ingredients together and let them sit in a cool place overnight. The next day, you should have a syrupy puree that’s perfect for adding into soft serve.

3. Using Fresh Fruit

Sometimes fresh is better, as certain fruits can lose a lot of flavor when frozen. Or maybe you have a connection with a local farmer and you’d like to showcase their produce in your soft serve. Whatever the case may be, fresh fruit must be given the same treatment as frozen to be usable in your ice cream. Macerating fresh fruit will result in a softer texture. We recommend giving extra time for tougher-skinned fruits, such as apples or grapes.

4. Don’t Use Too Much Sugar

Because fruit needs to be macerated in order to be usable in soft serve, you run the risk of adding too much sugar into your base. Over-sugaring your product will not only result in a sickeningly sweet concoction, but it will cause your product to freeze inconsistently. Sugar is a natural anti-freezing agent, so it’s important to be mindful about how much sugar you add to your ice cream bases so you get the right consistency.

While you can’t use whole fruit pieces in your ice cream base, macerating fruits will give you the fruity taste you’re looking for. Once you’ve learned to extract juices from your fruits, you can even start experimenting with adding other ingredients into your simple syrups, such as spices, vinegars, and extracts. When you’re ready to start serving your unique creations, contact ADI Electro Freeze to outfit your shop with our top-of-the-line soft serve machines today.