The Sorbetière Method, an explanation

So, that name may have confused you, but this is the old fashioned way of preparing ice cream.  A sorbetière is a covered pail with a cranking handle attached to the lid.  A type of sorbetière is pictured below:

This is also known as a pot freezer.  One placed salt and ice in the outside container.  The ingredients are put in the inside contain and get agitated, or churned, by turning the crank.  This is the same principle employed when using the coffee cans or Ziploc® bags method of making ice cream.  This is also very similar to the modern ice cream machine method.  The liner is either stored in the freezer or the machine contains a refrigeration unit.  Think of it as a double cooler instead of a double boiler.

Now, before anybody thought of attaching a crank to the bucket, the mixing was done by hand.  The by-hand method is the way I will be performing my tests.  To make sure I will be performing the technique correctly, I will first attempt to make ice cream this way before moving on to ice milk.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.

The Freezing Method, results

For the test of this method, I chose . . .

. . . a 2-cup Anchor® glass bowl with a Tupperware®-style lid.  I wanted to test the lid, so . . .

. . . I partially filled the glass container . . .

. . . and turned it sideways.  As you can see, there is no leak.  This is a pretty good seal for a glass dish.  Hopefully, this will not change in the freezer.  I placed the ingredients in the bowl and stirred with a wire whisk until the sugar seemed to be melted.  This is how the solution looked:

I covered the bowl and placed it in the freezer at 3:10 p.m.  As the recipe says to freeze it overnight, I set an alarm for 12 hours from now to continue the process.

Here is a picture of the solution after 12 hours.  It was pretty solid but looked like melted sugar.  Unfortunately, it is currently 3:10 a.m., so I cannot place it in the sun, as the recipe instructs.  Therefore, I put it under my desk lamp.  After about 21 minutes, it was still too stiff to stir, so I had my nightly scrambled eggs and watched some Willy Wonka.  At about 32 minutes, the edges and middle were starting to liquefy, but the mass was still too hard to stir.  Fifty minutes have passed, and I am too impatient to wait.  I started chipping away at the edges in an attempt to speed up the thawing.  This resulted in a very slushy snow cone.  There are still noticeable particles of ice in the mixture, nothing like ice cream at all.  Also, compared to the smoothie method, this has a lot less taste.  It is definitely not what I want to use in my milkshake recipe.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.

The Freezing Method, an explanation

The freezing method to make ice milk is rather simple in concept, and it comes from the Food.com website.  One simply puts milk in a freezer-safe container (a ceramic mug, a glass mixing cup, a metal bowl, etc.), seals it airtight using plastic wrap, and freezes the milk overnight.  The next day, the dish is to be left in the sun “for a little while” to soften to the point that it can be mixed, and then it is to be mixed.  This is supposed to result in ice milk.  I have posted a 4x6 recipe card to the web, which you can download here.

You can now see my results by clicking here.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.

The Smoothie Method, results

The smoothie method turned out to be pretty much what I expected.  This is a milk smoothie, not ice milk.

Above is a picture of the mixture right after processing.  It does have the appearance of creaminess.  However . . .

. . . as you can see from this picture, it is still very lumpy.

Within a few minutes, it was already melting, as you can see from the liquid at the edge of the bowl.  It did not maintain its frozenness (Wow, that is actually in my spellchecker.) very well.

Upon tasting a few spoonfuls, the mixture was very chunky, like a smoothie not blended enough.  (Hmmm . . . now I'm beginning to wonder if I should try the same recipe in my smoothie maker instead of the food processor.)  I don’t think the idea of ice milk is to have to chew it.  I decided to see how it would freeze, so I covered it and put it in the freezer.  A few hours later, it was the consistency of a frozen foam, as I could put my finger through it.  Upon checking it 24 hours later . . .

. . . it had definitely hardened somewhat but not completely.  Using a spoon, I scraped along the top.  This resulted in something akin to a milk snow cone.  Now I really wish I could find some actual ice milk so I could compare the two consistencies.  At this point, though, this is not the type of result I would want for a milk shake.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.

The Smoothie Method, an explanation

This method uses a food processor to chip ice and then to whip in the remaining ingredients.  It comes from this website and is credited to someone named Holly.  What one does is use the grating of slicing blade of a food processor to chip up a tray of ice cubes.  The regular blade is then put in the processor, and milk, sugar, and flavoring is added.  Holly recommends putting in some non-fat dry milk to make a creamier product.  I have posted a 4x6 recipe card to the web, which you can download here.

You can now see my results by clicking here.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.

The Freeze-and-Stir Method, an explanation

The first method for making ice milk I found is what I will call the freezer method.  As long as you have milk, sugar, flavoring, a glass or metal bowl, a freezer, and a mixing device (whisk, spoon, etc.), you can apparently make ice milk.  The recipe comes from Food.com and is quite simple, really, but takes a lot of time.  Once simply pours the ingredients into the bowl.  (The reason to use glass or metal is to retain the cold, which plastic and other materials will not do.)  The bowl is then placed in the freezer until crystals form on the milk.  Once this happens, stir the milk. Return the bowl to the freezer for another 2-4 hours.  At some point not given by the recipe, the mixture is poured into an airtight storage container, such as Tupperwear®, sealed, put back into the freezer, and allowed to sit overnight.  I have posted a 4x6 recipe card to the web, which you can download here.

I do not have the hours right now to attempt this type of recipe.  I will attempt to do this on the upcoming weekend.  At that time, I will add another blog post with photos and opinions.

As always, I welcome your comments.  Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.