# How do I make my ice cream fluffy?



## wannabe (Jul 4, 2005)

I'm using an ice-cream machine and I've tried several different recipes. It always freezes quite flat and dense. Google isn't helping, it always says to follow your machines instructions, and I am already doing that, but they need tweaking!

It's this machine
http://www.rivalproducts.com/athomep...d=2229&cid=229


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## SevenVeils (Aug 28, 2006)

Hmm. I've only had the type that requires ice and rock salt, but it sounds as if you (or your machine?) aren't churning it long enough. If you move it into the freezer to finish it off too soon, it will be too liquidy and freeze too densely. You need to keep churning until it is at least as thick as soft-serve before moving it to the still freezer.

If you're already churning it that long, or if your machine can't do it long enough, then I don't know... I always found that recipes that start with a custard base (cooked egg/cream/sweetener mixture) were fluffier and nicer.


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## tboroson (Nov 19, 2002)

You could invest in one of these.

I say that with longing, not mocking







: You're never going to get great fluffy ice cream out of a countertop ice cream maker. I use one of them myself and just deal with the ice cream being overly dense. A professional quality maker freezes the ice cream to a much lower temp, much faster, and agitates it much more in the process. It's simply not possible with a lesser machine.

One thing you could try, though, to see if it helps a little is to increase the amount of sugar you're using. As the water in the slurry freezes into little crystals, the sugar does not freeze with it. Instead, as progressively more water is tied up as ice, the concentration of sugar becomes increasingly concentrated in the remaining water. Eventually the remaining water is so saturated that it cannot freeze. It remains liquid. The water that froze out of solution is suspended in this super thick liquid as tiny ice crystals; the fat is similarly suspended in this matrix. If it weren't for the sugar, the ice would eventually just freeze solid. Those little ice crystals that were made early on would become frozen into the middle of the remaining water as it becomes ice. Solid lump. So you need a minimum concentration of sugar to make it become ice cream instead of frozen milk.


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## elmh23 (Jul 1, 2004)

My husband is the king of fluffy ice cream! When you're whisking your ingredients together, make sure you get lots of bubbles. Bubbles=air=fluffy.


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## Pookietooth (Jul 1, 2002)

Or you could serve it right out of the ice cream maker and call it soft serve!


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## cristeen (Jan 20, 2007)

In part I would blame the recipe, and in part the machine.

I make a beautiful ice cream in my countertop machine... but if I try to reduce the sugar (honey), it comes out much too dense. And you definitely need to wait to remove it for the point where it becomes a soft-serve consistency. That takes my countertop machine somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes, not the 20-30 the instructions say. The ice cream should be thick enough that as the paddle churns through the custard, it will hold it's shape really well (not just a little bit, but at least 1/2 an inch deep).


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## 425lisamarie (Mar 4, 2005)

You can totally get a great ice cream out of your "countertop" or whatever your goign to call them.

Balancing the milk/cream/sugar ratio is key. I'm not at home and don't have recipes right now....


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