Perfecting your base recipe is crucial to any sought-after ice cream or gelato, and this month we want to talk to you about solids.
It’s quite easy to forget just how many types of solids we have inside our ice cream recipes, from fats to proteins (typically milk proteins), lactose and other sugars, stabilisers to emulsifiers and not forgetting your all-important flavour. All of these ingredients play their own role within an ice cream.
What percentage of solids should our ice cream have?
Typically, we want our ice cream to contain anywhere between 32-42% total solids.
Now we must note that this is just an opinion (albeit one borne from experience). We are very much a believer that there is no wrong way to make an ice cream or gelato, there’s just your way.
But with that in mind, not falling within these percentages of solids can come with certain consequences.
Too low a percentage of total solids will mean that the product will be too light and will be unlikely to hold its structure for long. This ultimately will lead to a very cold finish and a short shelf life.
On the other side of the coin, having too many solids will produce a very dense product that will be unable to hold air. This will make the ice cream difficult to scoop, very crumbly and with, once again, a poor shelf life.
So, when we’re looking at solids within an ice cream or gelato, we need to think about what they’re there for, and what they’re there to do. Let’s take a look…
Fats
As discussed in a previous article, fat is in our recipe to provide that all-important flavour to our ice cream but also to give it structure.
We would usually get our fats from full fat milk, cream (double, whipping or single cream), butter or even vegetable fats. Our fat will bind to milk proteins (more on those later); this will hold air and stop water from forming into ice crystals.
Now our percentage of fats can be anywhere between 5-15%, but again, this is just guidance.
Proteins
Milk proteins within an ice cream recipe are typically made up of two different kinds: 80% casein and the other 20% whey protein. We usually want anywhere between 3.5-5% total milk proteins within our recipe.
We usually get these proteins from our milk and cream; but using these alone will not get us to our minimum amount of solids, therefore we would usually introduce skimmed milk powder to top us up to the number we need.
The protein we’re most interested in is casein; these are small molecules that are surface activated, meaning they will bond very well with our fats.
Lactose
When we use skimmed milk, we’re not just introducing milk protein, but lactose too. Milk powder will typically contain 38% milk protein and 52% lactose. As a sugar, lactose will give us a small amount of sweetness, but it will also provide the product with some anti-freeze.
Lactose and milk proteins go hand in hand within a recipe; often when referring to these ingredients they’re grouped together and labelled non-fat milk solids (NFMS) or milk solids non-fats (MSNF).
Sugars
Sugars within our ice cream base will make up anywhere between 12-16% of our total solids. These will typically consist of sucrose (or white sugar), dextrose and sometimes glucose (or even maltodextrin).
As you would expect, the purpose of these sugars are predominantly used for sweetness and anti-freeze. But often these sugars will also absorb loose water, giving us a longer shelf life too.
Stabilisers, emulsifiers and flavours
Our stabilisers, emulsifiers and flavours will usually account for anywhere between 0.5-4% of our total amount of solids. Stabilisers will work to bind water with our fat globules, emulsifiers will bind water and fat together, whilst flavours will, unsurprisingly, give us that important tasty flavour.
Getting the balance right
Choosing the ideal balance between fats against our sweet sugar is usually the way we will determine the balance of our overall recipe.
If we go high in fat solids, we often can’t go too high in sugar solids as this would increase our overall amount of solids and leave the recipe unbalanced. On the other hand, if someone decided they wanted to make a healthier ice cream with far less fat and sugar they will find, again, that they have an unbalanced recipe.
Outside of the science of solids, it is really the profile of your product that is important to consider.
A high amount of fat solids will bring that delicious creamy flavour which will reduce the amount of sweetness coming from your sugar solids, as fat has a much more powerful flavour. Whilst if you strike the balance between fat and sugars, you will get that indulgent and dense profile, creating a rich product.
Ultimately, people will take one of two approaches to producing their ice cream or gelato. Whilst some will look at the science and where they want their product to lie from this perspective, this sometimes will not match the flavour profile they’re looking for and therefore must look at each flavour individually to find the right balance.
Alternatively, you can say ‘this is the profile of my product no matter the flavour’ and this will provide the most consistent flavour and product stainability due to the consistent number of overall solids.
If you’d like any advice with regards to building a solid base, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Antonelli team.