As the weather gets nicer, it will be time to start thinking about making ice creams and sorbets. Often the biggest issue with homemade ice cream is that once you've made it, it turns too hard after some time in the freezer. The reason ice creams and sorbets aren't rock hard bought from the store or in a restaurant is that most of them use some sort of an invert sugar in the recipe.
Invert sugars are those sugars that are liquid at room temperature - honey, maple syrup, glucose, trimoline. These sugars also don't get as hard when frozen, so you don't need to temper the ice cream before you want to serve it. Honey and maple syrup are nice ways to flavour an ice cream or sorbet and easy invert sugars to purchase for home, but sometimes you don't want to introduce that extra flavour. Many commercial operations use glucose as a portion of the sweetness in their recipes and a way to involve an invert sugar, but it can be hard for individuals to track it down and purchase in a reasonable quantity. There are many other uses for an invert sugar as well - ganaches are one of my favorites as they come out smooth, shiny, and have a very reliable consistency.
I managed to track down the procedure for inverting your own sugar at chefeddy.com, and gave it a try. For household use, I cut his recipe in half and rounded out the numbers on the metric side and came out with a great product that conveniently fits into a 500ml plastic tub. Some helpful tips:
- if you use a cover for your pot when cooking a syrup (caramels too), the contained steam often eliminates the need to brush the sides down with a pastry brush.
- after the syrup is cooked and the initial heat has settled down, you want an airtight seal on the pot for the rest of the cooling time to prevent crystallization from contact with the air - again, the steam is your friend.
- if the syrup does get a bit of crystallization on top during cooling, no worry, just gently heat it up again to melt the crystals and re-cool it - double check your airtight seal.
You will need:
500g / 1lb 1.5oz white sugar
250ml /1C water
1/2g / 1/8tsp cream of tartar
Method:
- mix the sugar, water and tartaric acid in a clean saucepot
- use a thermometer or probe to monitor the temperature
- cover the pot or be prepared to brush the sides with water
- cook the syrup to 236F / 114C
- turn off the heat, let heat dissipate slightly
- replace cover and seal the edges with plastic wrap
- allow to cool to room temperature
- if there's so crystallization, transfer it to a container and store in the fridge until use
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