This weekend was show time. Jacob, Andy and I showed up at the appointed heladería in Villa Urquiza and made our five flavours of ice cream: dark chocolate, mint chocolate chip, dulce de leche with chocolate chips, apple and cinnamon, and lemon and cardamom. The star of the day was Maqfrio, the ice cream machine that Fernando, the maestro heladero and owner of the store, imported from Brazil more than seven years ago.
I wish I could say that the ice-cream making process was more complex and required an in-depth knowledge of food chemistry, expert skill and engineering, but the fact is, it was very similar to following a standard baking recipe, only on a much larger scale. We measured the designated amount of sugar, dextrose, powdered milk, stabilizer, flavour enhancer, water, eggs and cocoa in large buckets, then add it to the machine, which pasteurizes the mixture in a heated compartment that looks like my Cuisinart food processor. Then the machine transferred the mixture to a lower compartment to cool it and add air. At that point, we added the fruit flavourings (pulp, juice, applesauce, etc) and a spoonful of something called Soft Gel as it cooled. When the ice cream reaches -8 degrees Celsius, the machine beeped and we poured the ice cream to larger buckets, added the chocolate chips and cinnamon (when needed) and transferred it to a chest freezer, where it rested overnight.
What we discovered is that making ice cream is not as complex as we thought. To open our own ice cream shop, what we'll need in terms of equipment is a machine like Fernando has, a large number of buckets in various sizes, a scale to weigh ingredients, the fridge, access to cold water, and a deep freezer, and as the Argentines like to say, chau, ya estás. You're set to go, baby.
In the end, we ended up with 26 kilos of ice cream instead of the original 50 we expected. I'm not that upset by the 50% reduction in ice cream because I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around what 50 kilos would look like, and of course, there was the concern of what we would do with it all once it was in our hands....
Top picture: these are the buckets that they put the ice cream in when it comes out of the machine. The machine adds an incredible amount of air (crude recipe: add sugar, milk, water, stabilizer, air, then freeze); we put about 10 cups of liquids into the machine, and twenty minutes later, Maqfrio churned out about 10 litres of ice cream. (Note: this was on low setting.)
Middle picture: Andy and I are digging into a 10 kilo tub of dulce de leche. There is a dulce de leche flavouring in powder form, which we used, but the extra kick comes from using some of the real stuff as well. The same with fruits and cream flavours. For apple and cinnamon, we added artificial flavourings, but we also peeled and pureed a dozen green apples. For chocolate, we added cocoa and a quarter kilo of melted baking chocolate. For lemon, we added lemon flavouring and the juice and pulp of 15 freshly squeezed lemons. The eggs were real eggs, not egg powder. The only flavour that we didn't add fresh ingredients to was mint chocolate chip. What a difference fresh ingredients makes! Baskin Robbins, beware.
Bottom picture: This is what the ice cream looks like when it comes out of the machine. The consistency is very soft, which is why it needs to be left in a freezer at -20 degrees Celsius for approximately 18 to 24 hours. The flavour in the pic is dark chocolate.
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