More fun in the kitchen

Corn starch acts as a stabilizer for the ice cream and helps prevent the formation of large ice crystals.  I could go on at length based upon what I've recently read but I don't know what Mr. Beagles has found to be useful, or to what extent he wants to dig in and research the subtle aspects of ice cream making.  There's a lot to learn.

Here are some useful terms for Google searching: "heat shock ice cream," "corn starch ice cream," "stabilizers ice cream," "butterfat ice cream," "egg yolk ice cream," "alcohol ice cream," and "temperature ice cream."  Also, if you search for "ice cream recipes" you will be overwhelmed by their variety and abundance but will gain a good general understanding of the complexities of the good stuff.  It has been said that there are many paths to the Buddha, and this is a good example.

Ice cream is basically dairy stuff, sweetening stuff, and very cold temperatures; the variations are countless.  With egg, it's called a custard; without egg it's a "Philadelphia Style" ice cream.  There are rabbit holes within rabbit holes; explore as you will.

The chocolate batch was a semi-fail.  Besides using too much cocoa, it was the wrong kind.  I used the "dark chocolate" type instead of the normal unsweetened kind.  Also, there was too much butterfat as it had a slightly greasy aftertaste.  Lesson learned, but I still managed to eat about half of the small batch.

In an effort to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, I let the remaining chocolate batch thaw and added a couple of cups of whole milk and churned it again.  The result was a much more pleasing flavor, but now there was too little butterfat and it was more like a fudgesicle than ice cream.  Still good, though.  Trial and error will be my constant companions.

An unforeseen problem is that it is easier to make the stuff than to eat it all. Anything more than a cup of ice cream a day is way too much for me, regardless of how good it is.  Due to the limitations of home ice cream makers and freezers, long term storage is a fool's errand; best to eat it within a day or two of when it's made.

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Uncle Ken's questions regarding donations to bums (what is a bum, anyhow?) is vexing, and I fear, pointless.  Seems a little glib to me, as if the greater questions of ethics and morality can be boiled down to whether or not you part with a buck at a given point in time.  Instead of asking what others think, how about telling us what you think, Uncle Ken?  Do you give the bum a buck or not, and why?  There is no wrong answer.

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Us geezers aren't the only ones with memory problems, Mr. Beagles, as a search of "false memories" reveals.  There may be more to fake news than previously thought.  Come to think of it, I'm not sure if I remember that tree in Uncle Ken's yard but I do remember some ivy.