Dry Ice Ice Cream Quantities Wrong?

Moe_Rubenzahl_68337

The new article on dry ice cream:

http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/making-ice-cream-with-dry-ice

says "You'll need about three to four times the weight of the ice cream mix " but the recipe calls for:

Ice cream base 500  g

Dry ice 250  g

EIther the quantities are wrong, the instructions are wrong, or I am misunderstanding. Any insights?

ren_74229

I'm not so sure that 250g was a typo....i didn't scale out what i actually used to freeze the mix, but staring with 1500g post mallet (pre blender), I had tons leftover...Given that this was my first time working with dry ice in this way, even without better handling, I could probably do 6+ batches conservatively.  Certainly makes things more cost effective that way.  The dry ice bricks I get over here are about $5/kg...so if it cost me $7.50 just to spin 500g, I'd probably have to limit the technique to the occasional indulgence.  But at $1.25-$1.70 to spin a batch...totally worth it.  It would also be worth it to spend an afternoon busting out a bunch of different bases then spinning them all sequentially the next day.  All in all, makes me feel less in need of a pacojet or LN2.  I'd love to use liquid nitrogen, but it's just not practical for me right now.  Dry ice however, is available anytime just a few blocks away from home.

 This time, I just did one 500g sorbet batch and one 900g ice cream batch...plus re-spinning the sorbet because I wasn't thinking and let it hang around.  Even had plenty left over to super chill both batches before putting them into my regular freezer for storage.

Separately, I learned a few other things doing this:

1. Use that mallet step to make the chunks as small as practical...it makes the blend step much easier.

2. Use that excess dry ice to freeze your mixing bowl and paddle (and serving dishes).  Then you have to worry less about melting after you've spun.

3. Use that excess to deep freeze before putting it away for storage...again to prevent melting and larger crystal formation upon refreezing.

4. Out of the mixer, whatever you freeze will be likely to have residual dissolved CO2...fun for sorbets, but a little weird for the milk based stuff (and I love egg creams).  I'll check again in the morning to see if this effect goes away.

So here are the two bases I spun:

The chefsteps strawberry-angostura sorbet:

I didn't have the bitters at home...so I used vodka.  I didn't get to enjoy the bitter herbalness, and I'll check in the morning to see how the texture is with the lower proof vodka...I'm guessing that it won't be a huge difference.  Also, I only had a little fructose powder left, so I subbed in honey powder.  It has similar sweetness and anti-freezing power compared to fructose, so I didn't see any problem swapping them out.  Next time, I'd go with a little less malic...given the berries I had, not using bitters, and perhaps some of that residual CO2...out of the mixer it was on the tart side for me.  All that aside....it was pretty darned delicious, and it had a great texture.

The second batch that I made was a sweetened yolk cream base:

Again, good stuff other than the slightly weird residual CO2 + milk thing...I need lots of rocher practice, but this was a lot of fun!  I forsee much more frozen treat making in my future.