The Next Frontier - Keto Ice Cream

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #1

Start at the top:

Or go right to my contenders of choice:

(Laurie) #2

I used to have the first one listed. It was great!

(Bob M) #3

$650 for an ice cream maker? Yikes!

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #4

Here in Canada we get the ‘premium’ prices!

I might be willing to compromise with the Lello 4080 Musso Lussino at only CA$782.88. What is that really? Half a month’s rent.

This rather than go full bore for the Lello 5030 Musso Pola at CA$1555.00.

:upside_down_face::upside_down_face::upside_down_face:

(Bob M) #5

Read a review on Amazon for the one for $650 and he said he calculated it was worth it (rather than buying ice cream) if you make several pints per week. I’m trying to avoid most ice cream, so that’s a bit over what I want. :wink:

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #6

Once I get started with this experiment, I’m going to post my recipes for ‘keto’ ice cream. My goal is high sat fat and very low carbs, sans sweeteners. I don’t think I can get to zero carbs due to carbs in the cream, but I think I can get close. In other words, 100% keto goodness. I think I can do it, so stay tuned.

#7

I have a recipe for strawberry ice cream that I actually enjoy. It doesn’t use as much sweetener because of the strawberries. I read people also tried it with raspberries and had good results. My husband says fruit doesn’t belong in ice cream so I would understand if that is not your thing.

#8

Here is a link to the recipe:

*It is way better churned. I have also used popsicle molds.

(Bob M) #9

Interesting.

BK (before keto), my wife and I took our kids to a great ice cream shop. Both daughters ordered something off the wall for them. One ordered mint chip and the other strawberry. My wife and I were stunned – we didn’t know they even knew about those flavors.

The youngest did not eat all her strawberry, and we both had some. It was great! Made me rethink fruit and ice cream. (Though I’d still do chocolate over fruit.)

(Bob M) #10

@amwassil How will you deal with the hardness issue? Supposedly, sugar makes the ice cream less hard. I’ve seen people add vodka, but I’ve never tried this.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #11

@Pbash You are correct, I am not particularly interested in fruit-flavoured ice cream. My initial intention is to make a keto ice cream that tastes great and contains as few carbs as possible. As noted, I don’t think zero carb is possible due to the carb content of cream, but I think very low carb is doable. For example, my current keto coffee mix contains 1.68 grams of carbs, mostly from the cream but the rest from whey protein powders. Scaling this up to about a cup of ice cream would double or treble the carbs, but still be sub 5 grams for about 200 grams of ice cream, which would be a useful serving size. I also think adding any type of sweetener is not necessary, as the mix of fats and protein are sweet enough on their own.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #12

My initial thought, subject to experimentation, is freeze time. Also, I’m sure that the additional fats I use will affect consistency/hardness as well. Lots to learn!

(Laurie) #13

I used to make sugar-free ice cream all the time, with stevia and artificial sweetener. Since the cream is being constantly churned (with air mixed in), it doesn’t have a chance to get hard. It was a pretty normal ic cream consistency.

I never stored it though – we ate it right away.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #14

Yes, I read somewhere but don’t recall just where at the moment (maybe in my OP link) that the consistency (aka hardness/density) results from how much air gets incorporated in the ice cream.

I do not intend to use any artificial sweeteners, including stevia or monkfruit. I don’t think they’re needed.

(Laurie) #15

Right, just saying the lack of sugar didn’t seem to be a problem as far as consistency was concerned. Have fun with your experiment!

#16

It’s doable, once I tried to make eggnog and it became ice cream :smiley: It was very good and sweet enough for me without sweeteners. It had sugar from cream and the rum helped too.
It was my first keto ice cream that had a significant amount of something that wasn’t egg yolk… It really needed a lot of cream to be barely sweet enough.

I can’t make fruit ice creams at all as they makes the stuff watery and after some time, it becomes a flavored ice block. It probably would need too much alcohol to avoid that and I have no other option to lower the freezing point. If I make a fruit ice cream, that must be VERY fruity. Except maybe lemon ice cream, lemon is very flavorful, a little juice goes a long way… I never tried that, maybe I will…

Chocolate and coffee is out when I don’t want to use sweetener… So I have vanilla and eggnog ice cream. The first was originally dairy free (I avoided lactose at that time), mostly egg yolks and I simply made it a few hours before consumption so the hardness was just perfect without alcohol. But 1 hour more and it got too hard and I had to wait… So it’s not really convenient.

I am not always happy with my ice cream for some reason so I am interested in other people’s attempts, I want to create an always impressive one. (And I will add yolks, of course. No way my ice cream wouldn’t be at least 50% yolks. I am used to eggy everything anyway. Yolks are creamy, fatty, flavorful and nutritious. I need protein for satiation too, in every dish.)

Carbs aren’t a real concern in my ice cream, my original had banana too. My portions are surprisingly small as my ice cream is so rich. I would get way, way more carbs from a cream based ice cream (I love cream but it fails to satiate me and this combination easily results in eating very much) - or I would be unsatisfied.

I whip my cream for ice cream but then it gets mixed and I think much air escapes…? I still don’t have much experiences and I never want ice cream when I do carnivore so I don’t know enough yet. I started to use mascarpone too as I like it for desserts very much… I need much more trials.

(Joey) #17

@islandlight I’m with you, totally! :+1:

Well, almost totally …

I get a half gallon of heavy cream (e.g., Costco) to make two deep casserole dishes of it at a time.

Needless to say, at this volume most goes into the freezer; we carve out thick slices every few nights thereafter for dessert.

Current favorite flavors:

Dark chocolate (100% unsweetened cacao powder) with almond slices, a touch of vanilla extract, almond extract, and a few squirts of liquid pure Stevia extract to taste.

Vanilla coconut (appreciably more vanilla extract, organic coconut flakes), same Stevia treatment.

It does get hard in our (very cold) freezer, so we let it sit out for a short while before slicing. Then back in the freezer goes the rest for next time. :yum:

#18

I was unable to open your links in the original post (probably a problem on my end). Here is a link to using heavy cream to make a low carb version of sweetened condensed milk. The condensed heavy cream is tasty on its own.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #19

@Pbash Thank you for the link! I may be able to utilize some of her ideas. I won’t be using any type of artificial sweetener or gums. I think that’s probably the real challenge.

I am seriously (I mean very seriously) considering this ice cream maker (CA$782.88):


If the above link doesn’t work for you: TRY THIS LINK

My primary reason, other than I think it’s a really cool machine (pun intended :+1:) is:

The dasher of the Lello 4080

The dasher is just another another name for the paddle that mixes the ice cream in the machine. The Lello 4080 has a heavy solid steel dasher with just one blade. It’s the only domestic machine with a metal dasher; all the others are plastic.

lello-4080-musso-lussino-dasher

The dasher of an ice cream maker has 3 very important jobs:

  1. scraping frozen mixture off the sides of the bowl and moving it into the middle
  2. adding air to the misture
  3. encouraging the fat to clump together to support the air

These jobs are so important because they have a significant impact on the quality and the consistency of the final ice cream.

The dashers impact on the quality of the ice cream

We all want smooth ice cream. How smooth it is, is probably the clearest indication of how good an ice cream really is. And if we read our ice cream science, we know that the faster an ice cream freezes, the smoother it will be.

One of the things that will influence how fast a mixture freezes, is the gap between the dasher blades and the side of the bowl. While commercial machines have spring loaded blades that actually touch the sides of the bowl, on domestic machines there is always a small gap.

lello-4080-musso-lussino-dasher-gap

This means that as the blades rotate they will always leave a thin layer of frozen mixture on the sides of the bowl. This layer insulates the rest of the mix from the coldness of the compressor and slows the freezing process.

lello-4080-musso-lussino-insulating-ice

So we’re always looking for the smallest gap possible. On the Lello 4080, the curved blade leaves a gap which varies between 2 and 3 mm, which is actually pretty wide compared to other domestic machines. Which is worrying.

But the other job of the dasher is smash the fat globules together so that they start to group and form strings that support the air bubbles that it’s also introducing to the mix. And it’s such a substantial piece of metal you’d imagine it’s going to do a good job of that!

The dashers impact on the consistency of the ice cream

The amount of air that the dasher whips into the mixture has a profound effect on the consistency of the final ice cream. More air produces lighter, fluffier ice creams. Less air makes denser, creamier ice creams.

The shape of the dasher and the speed that it rotates will determine how much air the machine is able to incorporate into the mixture. However, the recipe your using and the amount of mixture you’ve added to the machine also has a huge effect.

… The Lello 4080 dasher rotates at 80 rpm which is the fastest of all the domestic machines I’ve tested.

However this is still much slower than commercial machines which can rotate as fast as 200 rpm. Almost all domestic machines spin relatively slowly, so they tend to incorporate less air and produce, denser ice creams.

We’ll see how much air exactly the Lello 4080 whips into it’s ice creams a little later on in the How good is the ice cream section!

How good is the ice cream from the Lello 4080?

I was a bit worried the first time I used the Lello 4080. Once the initial excitement of un-packing such a high end piece of professional looking equipment had subsided, I started to get nervous.

I’d read reviews that said: yeah, it makes better ice cream than the other domestic machines, but it’s not that much better.

I was annoyed that one of the feet was uneven. The big-ish gap between the dasher blade concerned me. It seemed to take a long time to pre-cool, only reaching a fairly average -15 °F (-26 °C) in one part of the bowl while other parts were much warmer. And even when I started churning, it didn’t seem to be freezing any faster than the super cheap Knox Gear ice cream maker (which I was running alongside as a comparison).

In fact, I extracted the Knox Gear ice cream 5 minutes before I turned my attention to the Lello 4080, after 30 minutes. But as soon as I stopped the dasher and pushed a spoon into the ice cream, I knew something was different.

It was so firm. It was like gelato from an ice cream store. And when I tasted it, it was incredible. Buttery smooth. Dense. Super, super smooth. It had the same texture as ice cream I’ve had in high end restaurants. And this was from a no-cook, relatively low fat and low sugar base!

I think the ice cream that the Lello 4080 makes is on a completely different level to any other domestic machine. For me it is really is that much better.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #20

And just because I’m such a nerd:

This article discusses the role of ‘sugar solution’ in detail. As I’ve noted previously, I suspect that ultimately not using sugar or sweeteners may be my biggest challenge.