How to remedy rock-hard sugar-free ice cream
I am making sugar free ice cream, however I obviously have run into many issues.
The first is that my ice cream is freezing hard as a rock when left overnight. When reading the forums on many websites I see that this could be due to a lack of stabilizers mainly being sugar. Since I have no sugar in my ice cream, I cannot figure out what substitute to implement. I'm sticking to the sugar free aspect with all of the ingredients. I have three questions that pertain to this:
- Do I need to use guar gum in conjunction with Xantham Gum to not have the ice cream freeze like a rock?
- Are there oils I can add to increase stabilization in place of the sugar by adding essential fats?
- Are there any stabilizers that I can add to achieve the proper stabilization that sugar would have in the ice cream?
Best Answer
I don't think that it´s lacking stabilizers that are causing the hardness of your mixture.
The softness of ice cream is a result of a share (typically around 70%) of the contained water being frozen to microscopic ice crystals while another part remains liquid. To keep this share of water liquid below 0°C it is required to lower the freezing point and this is done by dissolving sugars in the mix, because they consist of small molecules which will freeze on a lower temperature than the larger molecules of the water. So if sugar-free only relates to sucrose (the usual household sugar) switching to another type of sugar like dextrose or fructose could be an option, if not, you will have to look for another ingredient with a small molecule size to get the freezing point down, like alcohol. Be aware that all these options come with different PAC (potere anticongelante, freezing inhibition power) value, so that you can not simply exchange them by a 1:1-ratio but will have to re-balance your mix.
Pictures about "How to remedy rock-hard sugar-free ice cream"
How to improve ice cream texture?
Dairy products improve smoothnessWhat makes ice cream hard?
If the ice cream is not churned fast enough, larger ice crystals can develop, causing the ice cream to become too hard when frozen. The faster it is churned the more air that is whipped into it, which will help it from freezing as hard.Can you remove sugar from ice cream?
Just like fat, sugar is one those ingredients that we might want to cut out of ice cream. Or at least reduce. But just like fat, sugar is an essential component of ice cream. So while we can certainly reduce it, it's very difficult to cut it out altogether.Why does ice cream need sugar?
The sugar controls the amount of ice formed during the freezing of the product. This ensures that the ice cream is soft enough to scoop and eat. It also gives thickness to the product and makes it stable to heat shock (being in and out of the freezer). The sugar will help as well to release the flavor of the ice cream.Sugar Free Ice Cream
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