OT needing ice cream experts

The magic of chemicals (thickeners like carageenen and such) and high fructose corn syrup.

marcella

Oh, that sounds just wicked.

I was thinking I had a recipe more in line with the original post - low-fat and no eggs. I'll keep digging today. I remember it had a box of instant vanilla pudding in it which I suspect made it creamy to replace the missing eggs.

marcella

Okay, I finally went in and got a couple of my cookbooks off the shelf. Can't find the little spiral notebook with the favorite ice cream recipe, from Girl Scout Camp, but do have here a whole cookbook on ice cream. Lots of low fat recipes, and a major comment: for less rich ice cream substitute lower fat milk products. One thing that helps is using evaporated milk instead of regular, or for part of the regular. The thickness helps keep the end product creamy. And you can now find evap skim milk, too.

There are way too many recipes here to post any specifics unless there is a request-- I think I may have to get out the small ice cream maker soon. Especially since the refrigerator is on its last legs, I think. Ice stays frozen, but not ice cream. within a day we have soft-serve ice cream. sigh.

There is an interesting section of definitions of frozen desserts-- according to this "Ice Cream is a frozen mixture with a hight fat content. It is rich with cream, milk, sweeteners and flavorings. Most Homemade ice creams are actually French ice creams or frozen custard because they contain whole eggs or egg yolks." Sherbets are made with milk instead of cream, and contain fruits/fruit juices and sugar or other sweetener. Unflavored gelatin or beaten egg whites may be added for fluffier texture. Sorbets contain no milk or eggs to reduce ice crystals.

There are even dr> >

So they would call "low fat double cream" that because calling it "lots of milk solids with added sugar and double carageenen" wouldn't sell so well?

NightMist what happened to truth in lableing?

I have a cookbook called The Best Light Recipe. I got mine online but I saw it at Costco since then. It is really helpful in teaching and explaining a lot about cutting fat. This book is no fat nazi book but rather one that sort of meets in the middle. Lots of fat cut but still recipes that you can serve to folks that are used to 'real' food. If your diet is VERY strict in cutting fat it won't be so great. They give a blurb on fat free half and half. It is made from fat free milk, corn syrup, and a slew of natural and artificial additives. They recommend against using it to cook with but if you like cream in your coffee it is serviceable. They liked Land O' Lakes brand best.

HTH, Taria

NightMist wrote:

Thanks a bunch for the toast, however, I would rather have Whole Foods, if it's all the same to you!

I've never heard of essence. We have extract and flavoring here. The extract is strong and the flavoring is weak. To complicate matters more, there is the truly feeble imitation flavoring, and all manner of combinations of the three. I learned long ago to stick to one brand of real extract to get consistent results.

BTW the vanilla pods can be used to make your own flavoring. All you need is a little vodka and time (months) for the pod to steep. Debra in VA See my quilts at

Oh dear, that's just awful. I don't care at all for the processed honey sold in grocery stores as it lacks the bite of raw honey. I buy my honey direct from a bee keeper at a local flea market. He has all kinds of variety throughout the year which can only be gotten by bees producing it from natural nectar sources through the growing season. My preference is for clover honey, but I'll take whatever he has available. Debra in VA See my quilts at

That should have had a drool warning at the beginning! Debra in VA See my quilts at

There is a difference in "sweetness" depending on what the bees "feed" on. Found that out when I made a batch of mead with Buckwheat honey. That stuff went so fast it wasn't funny. And used every single bit of sugar in the honey. I ended up having to add more honey to get the stuff to finish off and be drinkable. Orange honey is a lot sweeter. And yes different flowers produce way different tasting honey flavors. Clover is sort of a "general all purpose" in many places. Around here we get "desert" honey, and if we are lucky might find mesquite honey.

BTW, last time I was >

Thought someone here might like the following recipe: From: Ice Cream, by Mable and Gar Hoffman, published by HPBooks

Frozen Kir Spritzer In a small saucepan combine:

2 cups dry white wine 1/4 cup sugar 2 Tbs lemon juice. Stir over low heat until sugar dissolves. Cool to room temp. and add 1/2 cup créme de cassis Pour into loaf pan or several undivided ice cube trays. Place in freezer until almost firm. (1-3 hours) Break into pieces. Spoon into a large chilled bowl, or chilled food processor bowl and beat with mixer or metal blade until fine grained. Do not let it thaw. Return to pan and freeze until almost firm. (1-3 hours) scoop frozen mixture into 5-6 tall glasses. Fill glasses with chilled club soda or lemon-lime soda.

Does sound nice and cool...........

Or this one--(Same source) Wine Slush Combine in a small saucepan:

1 cup sugar 1 cup water 1 tsp. grated orange zest Stir over medium heat until it comes to a boil. Simmer without stirring for 5 minutes. Pour through a fine strainer to remove orange peel. and cool to room temperature. Stir in: 1 cup Burgundy wine 1 cup orange juice 1/4 cup lemon juice. Pour into ice cream maker canister and process. (Can also be done in the pan, freezer, break up, etc. method) Serve slushy. Makes 3-4 cups.

Enjoy

Pati, > There are even drinks of various sorts. Bloody Mary Frappé anyone?

Buckwheat honey makes just amazing (and really really strong) mead. Try avocado honey sometime. It is not my favorite for eating, but it is most excellent for mead, actually methoglin since I find that you want to add a bit of herb (linden or elderflowers are my prefered in this) because sometimes avaocado honey is prone to that sharpish metallic tang that some hives produce. Linden especially takes that out. IMHO, YMMV

Been here?

Alas, honey prices are going to skyrocket because of all the hives dying off. The mites and whatnot from China have just about wiped out any wild bees that were left, hurt the population of kept bees, and now we are getting large numbers of inexplicable domesticated hive die offs. It is not going to be a good year for honey. If they can't figure this die off thing out it might be a bad several years for honey.

NightMist Used to have a beekeeper I bartered with, but he joined AA and got all wierd on me.

not only honey prices will go up if you lose a substantial percentage of the bee hives and wild bees. all fruits and vegetables with flowers need pollenating by those little busy bees. consider if those had to be pollenated by the farmers by hand to get the produce needed for the market. how many farm workers would be needed then?? (rhetorical) paying them will be astronomical when you consider the time it takes to do all that miniature work. increases the workforce and the cost to buy. bees are an essential part of farming, wild or domestic.

we had bee mites come into nz a few yrs back and took ages and ages to rid the country of them. the cost never did go back down completely, as once the market pays high prices the cost of living just goes up and thats the end of story, for the most part. sigh... being an island is why they are sooooo very strict when entering this country on bringing in any food, plants, meats etc. heck i thot honey from a restaurant was ok but i had it taken from me on arrival.

nearing the shortest day of the yr here and tho it was cold last night, down to 4C in some places in auckland, i heard, tis still a lovely sunny day today. i've got the deck door and curtains wide open and not a breath of wind, not bad for a winter day with temp about 16C/61F. :) cheers, jeanne jeanne

Thanks for the website. Looks like fun. That batch of mead that started with 20 pounds of buckwheat honey was certainly potent. (And yes, it was technically a methleglin, with spices/herbs added) I usually add a mix of cinnamon stick, cloves, and such to the basic mead recipe. Have also used star anise in some.

The very first batch of mead I ever made was back in the SCA dark ages--very early '70s. Had no source for wine yeast so used a partial package of older baking yeast. Flavored with raisins, a banana (the esters that are released do interesting things to the fermentation rate) and spices. End results were "interesting", but it did get consumed. Of course, as Rick has said, that was also in the days of "mead aging in the car on the way to the event" so what could you expect.

Best batch was one that was able to sit for a long, long time. Had people trying to lick out the bottle. And got told to never let anyone consume much of it at one sitting. It did go down nice and smooth. But then if you tried to stand up--------- that was a whole 'nother story.

I do hope the experts figure out why the bee hive die offs are happening. Not only for the honey but for the crops. There are some major crop declines happening because of the lack of hives to pollinate the fields/trees.

Would love to f> Buckwheat honey makes just amazing (and really really strong) mead.

The scary part is that the die offs are worldwide. It's not a loss of honey that worries researchers around the world, it's a lack of pollinating insects needed to produce food crops.

According to French research, the city dwelling bees are doing much better than their suburban and country cousins. The bee die-offs may be due to pesticides, herbicides, and other chemical pollutants.

BTW--wish I had been one of the bottle lickers. A good meade is a joy to taste.

Debra in VA See my quilts at

Ah shoot!

I thought it was just the US, Spain, and Poland. But it makes sense that if it was hitting areas that far apart, the rest of the planet would start seeing it too.

I have a secret theory that it is not chemicals of any variety, but RF and microwave saturation. The last report I read said that the bees were not dying in the hive, they were leaving as usual and not coming back. Basically they were getting lost on the way home. Since nobody has actually ever figured out for sure how bees find their way home, interference from cell phone towers and other sources is as good a guess as any.

NightMist

I tend to prefer the more subtle herbs, but DH does love a bit of spice in mead.

Ah yes, the early days when foaming mead meant "not done fermenting yet", rather than "used a specific beer or champagne yeast". (G)

Yep some meads are sneaky like that. Goes down like sweet tea or soda pop, hits like hard liquor. The best way to make sure you have good well aged mead to hand is to make it a LOT. Alas! since my beekeeper embarked on a crusade to "save the world from alchohol" I haven't been able to make mead like I used to. One time I swapped a queen sized quilt to his wife in exchange for a hundred pounds of honey and fifty pounds of wax. Now he won't allow swaps with me because I have been known to make "the devil's brew" and otherwise consort with the demon rum. Pity for his wife, she is in a chair with but one strong hand and enjoyed a good dicker like nothing else. We would get going like an amishman trading with a pennsylvania dutchman, even if at the end of it she would get naught but a basket of tomatos and herbs and I would get naught but a sheaf of straw. Then we would have coffee and doughnuts.

You know I do believe that the lack of local keepers is part of the problem. I know that in some places they have zoned out things like beekeepers, never mind that without bees the other pollinaters cannot keep up with the crop volume. So some beekeepers have found it to their financial advantage to tote their hives around to pollinate for farmers that don't have any or don't have enough local bees. I imagine that that might have messed up the bees just as easily as my rf theory. Honeybees are not native to north america, so mucking about with them here is a chancey buisness I would think.

NightMist

Hmm, could be high power electrical fields or something messing with the bees sense of direction too. Or maybe it's the same thing that leads healthy whales to stray up rivers and onto beaches. I just hope the scientists figure it out and find a solution before it's too late. Debra in VA See my quilts at

I'd go with the rf theory. Beekeepers have always toted their bees around, for enhancement of the flavor of the honey. Different pollens affect the flavor, so you take the bees wherever the desired flowers are. We never lost a hive that way. My husband is a beekeeper. One factor that is hurting is the hysteria over Africanized bees. Sure, they are dangerous and becoming more common. But the media attention has gotten people to start calling exterminators anytime they find a wild hive on their property. People used to call DH, and he'd go get them. Not so much anymore. Bees aren't easy to raise, and there's a plethora of things that can happen to a hive. They're very susceptible to verroa mites, and disease. Moths will invade and cause them to abandon their hive. Farmers use too many chemicals now. DH has just about given up except for keeping a few hives just for our own supply.

Sherry