Whether throwing a Labor Day cookout or providing a post-dinner treat for the kids, there’s nothing like a frosty scoop of homemade ice cream to ease the rocky road back to school and into the hot, dry days of fall.
And, since the North Coast doubles as dairy cow heaven, there is no dearth of top-quality milk, cream and maybe eggs to create the tastiest concoctions.
For those who want to give homemade ice cream a spin, there are several kinds of machines to choose from, but the ice cream makers with a freezable canister or bowl are probably the best bet for beginners.
“There’s a Cuisinart ice cream machine where you freeze the canister,” said Jenny Malicki, pastry chef for Zazu Kitchen + Farm in Sebastopol and former floor manager at Sur La Table in Santa Rosa. “It’s relatively inexpensive, at $50, and you can go to their website and use their recipes for ice cream, frozen yogurt and sorbet.”
John Trunk, head chef at The Pullman Kitchen in Santa Rosa, grew up amid the bountiful dairies of upstate New York and has fond memories of the ice cream churned from the local Ronnybrook Farm Dairy products.
“In summer, me and my mom would go to LB’s in Poughkeepsie for soft-serve ice cream,” said Trunk, who graduated from the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park in upstate New York.
At The Pullman Kitchen, Trunk and chef/owner Darren McRonald make small batches of fresh ice cream every day for their customers, who often drop by boxes of their own peaches or apricots to add to the local flavors. Like any culinary dish, the freshness of the ingredients is key to making tasty ice cream.
“We use local, organic Clover dairy products and fresh fruit,” Trunk said. “And we don’t use any stabilizers or preservatives.”
McRonald and Trunk, who have cooked together for 15 years, learned a lot about ice cream from pastry chef Isaura Rojas while they were cooking for well-known chef Cindy Pawlcyn at her Napa Valley restaurants. They also picked up a few tips from pastry chef David Leibovitz, who has written several dessert cookbooks, including “The Perfect Scoop.”
“His recipes work incredibly well,” Trunk said. “He’s got a sophisticated flavor palate, and yet he has an appreciation of childhood fun.”
To make their ice creams, Truck said, they always start with both a vanilla base and a milk chocolate base, which enables them to create a myriad of flavors, including two of their most popular: Rocky Road (milk chocolate ice cream, dark chocolate covered almonds, mini-marshmallows and fudge swirl) and Cream Cheese Frosting (vanilla base with cream cheese frosting piped into it.)
“People also go nuts over the peach ice cream,” Trunk said. “We mix the fruit purees with the vanilla base, which is our mother base.”
When working with fresh fruit, it’s important to taste and add just enough sugar to create the right sweetness and texture.
“I taste at every juncture,” Trunk said. “The sugar regulates how hard it will freeze. If you add more, it means it will be softer, but if you add too much, it won’t freeze at all.”
To make a custard ice cream base, they start by making a cooked custard from eggs and warm milk, then strain it and add it to cold cream. For the vanilla base, they slowly steep vanilla beans in the milk first, to maximize the flavor.
“That’s the background flavor,” Trunck said. “At the end of the custard making, we add the vanilla extract, so that you get that essence of vanilla on the front of the palate.”
After the ice cream base is made, Trunk lets it sit overnight in the refrigerator, so that the flavors meld and mature. Then he spins it in the restaurant’s compressor ice cream machine, which uses a similar technology to a common freezer/refrigerator to stay cold.
“We usually spin at night,” he said. “It comes out with the consistency of soft ice cream, Then we let it set overnight and in the morning, it’s nice and scoopable.”
If you’re making ice cream for a dinner party, it’s a good idea to start a few days in advance, Trunk said, so you can make sure it has time to set.
Homemade ice cream sandwiches may need additional time. After the sandwich is built, Truck likes to let the ice cream and soft cookie meld together in the refrigerator for a day.
“Otherwise, you can see the ice cream shoot right out when you bite into it,” said Trunk, who favors ice cream sandwiches made with soft, chocolate wafers.
For parties, Trunk said he is always on the lookout for a vintage ice cream maker that uses a combination of ice and rock salt and either an electric or manual crank.
“Most of the time, ice cream gets made behind doors, so no one gets to see how it’s done,” he said. “A churning style is great for events, because people love to see it.”
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