Cookaholics Bulletin Board

One of my prize possessions in the Philippines is a 6 quart White Mountain Ice Cream machine, the type that uses ice and rock salt. I brought the electric version over, which was great for the first couple of years. But then it quit. The manufacturer (Rival) suggests returning the motor (head unit and all) to their service center for repair, but that is not so feasible when it is parked half way around the world. So I ran into a second motor (without the head unit) used but purportedly in good condition for sale on eBay. I bought it, got it here and installed it. I got two months out of it.

So for quite awhile my unit has sat listlessly in storage and my previous reputation for ice cream among the locals has begun to evaporate. However, one brother-in-law just graduated from a junior college with an associate degree in electrical engineering. Who would make a better candidate for sorting my two electrical motors out? I sent him one motor. He looked it over and realized it was quite similar to the motors used in electric drills and grinders. He tested it and found it was in good shape except for the brushes which were worn and the spring was not strong enough to keep the brush in proper position to the rotor. A bit of judicious reshaping along with nudging at the spring and motor number one has been restored to service. He is now hunting for replacement contacts, which if found, will be installed in motor number two (providing it is suffering from a similar problem).

And the second White Mountain manual unit I bought and is shortly to arrive here will make a fine back up for the occasional "brown outs" we experience with some frequency. Still it will be nice to have a functioning ice cream maker again. WooHoo! Gonna be working on mango ice cream soon and in a couple of months, strawberry season will be here!

Tatoosh

Care to share your mango ice cream recipe?

I will be happy to but it will take a day or two. Family is in the middle of finals here so computer access is limited and when I do get to it, they want me to proof read their papers and so forth.

We haven't settled on a final "mango ice cream" recipe yet. As I've posted in a different thread, I run into ice crystal problems from both mango and strawberry ice cream. I make both from natural fruit which has a fairly high water content. Our vanilla and chocolate flavors do not have this problem, so I think it is the fruit causing it. One thing we have done is to reduce the mango (and we did it with strawberries too) which minimized the crystals but drastically changed the flavor from fresh mango to more of a mango caramel, very nice in its own right, but not what we were looking for at the time.

We do use a lot of egg yolks, UHT heavy cream (the only kind available), fresh milk, and natural ingredients when at all possible.

I'll get the actual ingredient list and procedure posted shortly.

Steve

Steve
Put a bit of booze in your fruit. It keeps it from freezing to a solid. I also have seen recipes using corn syrup for the same purpose but I would imagine that is not readily available. I can't get it here in Switzerland but usually stick some in my suitcase.

Mary

Agree with Mary about the alcohol. We add alcohol (typically a liqueur of the fruit) to all fruit ice creams at the restaurant because of ice crystals. That, and it makes it taste good.

Amy

And then there is the "one for the chef" rule. A little gin in the müseli anyone?

Mary

How much is "a bit"? I've tried strawberry ice cream in our Chinese White Mountain clone and as with the others the finshed product ices up when I store it.

I would say we're using about 1-2 tablespoons per quart. But, I'm also using a Pacojet, so the fruit is completely pulverized. I think that makes a difference in how much alcohol to use.

Amy

Our current Mango Ice Cream Recipe, an egg custard based version we originally found in The Ice Cream Maker Companion by Avner Laskin and modified.

15 - 20 Egg Yolks (depending on size)
2 cups Sugar
1/4 tsp Salt
4 cups Milk
4 cups Heavy Cream
2 tsp Vanilla Extract
2 Cups Mango (usually reduced by 1/3 to 1/2 on the stove top)

We do the standard custard, mixing egg yolks and half the sugar, then heating the milk with the remaining sugar. We usually include the heavy cream too when heating. We temper the eggs and milk and heat. We have been heating to 175F per the original instructions, but after reading more, we will likely reduce that substantially. After coming off heat and cooling a bit, we strain and add the mango reduction. Then we process per the White Mountain instructions. We find that it usually takes half an hour or more to make a 4 quart batch in the 6 quart machine.

The more your reduce the mango, the more pronounced caramel flavor that develops. It is quite delicious, but it loses its "Fresh Mango-ness". It depends on what you want to treat your taste buds to.

We will be modifying this recipe based on some of the comments here and the new CI guide, plus using the tip about combining some alcohol with the mango puree. We will likely use vodka since it adds the least flavor. Down the road, we may try a mango-rum version. And when my vanilla beans arrive from Indonesia, we will move away from the local vanilla extract which is without doubt artificial, and go to a mix of pure vanilla extract (home made) and vanilla beans. Thanks for that pointer to the eGullet article Tim.

I am very pleased to announce that my White Mountain is working again. While we have not found the replacement brushes I hoped for, we opened the second motor and discovered it had a broken spring for one of the brushes. A retractable pen met its demise shortly after and with its spring, the second motor was restored to working order. We just finished a half hour test run without problems. So I'm off to the local dairy to buy fresh milk and some UHT heavy cream so we can get back in the frozen dessert business pronto!


@ Marygott, surprisingly, we do have corn syrup show up on the shelves here fairly often. I have a couple of bottles of it in my pantry. I may try it down the road, but would likely have to adjust the sugar in the recipe since corn syrup is quite sweet. But I'm open to any solution that will give smooth natural fruit ice cream without those annoying sandy ice crystals.


Steve

We are doing another variation/experiment on Mango ice cream, making the custard today. We are going to use the CI ice cream base recipe that includes some corn syrup in it. And I am preparing the mango puree along the guidelines for CI's strawberry ice cream recipe that includes vodka and a bit of lemon juice. We'll add the vodka laced mango puree, adulterated with lemon juice and vanilla extract after the custard is cooled. The custard will marry until tomorrow and then we'll give the newly repaired ice cream maker its first serious trial.

I mentioned in my previous post about reducing the mango puree, which we reduce by half, starting with 4 cups of mango puree and ending with 2 cups of a much darker, caramel tasting reduction. I had thought that was my innovation, but as a newbie in the Philippines, I have much to learn. Reducing mango to a dark brown caramel flavor is a traditional cooking method here, I have found out, and is called Jaleya, so I've been making mango jaleya ice cream for some time without realizing it!

Steve