Ice Cream Question???

Kate Connally <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Yeah, if you want to mortgage your house to buy a vanilla
bean. Do you know how much those things cost????
Yikes!!!!!

Kate

Check this out:

thespicehouse.comproduct 310 descrOpen ↗
iption.php

the equivalent of 12 beans for $14 US.

They also sell individual beans for $2-$3 per. Not as cheap
as Alex's (and he should really consider going into the
vanilla business) but not bad. Plus, you can get some great
cinamon from them too. If you're ever in Chicagol, make a
trip to the store.

As for the rest: Alex has his own orthodoxy. His rose ice
cream looks more like a gelatto recipe than an ice cream.

The funny thing is, some gelatto experts say that gelatto is
only good fresh, so don't make it and then store it.

I'm with you on the temperature thing, as is the president
of Edy's/Dryers. Ice cream is meant to be stored at as cold
a temp as possible (to eliminate freeze/thaw cycles) but
served as close to freezing as possible, to improve texture
and flavor availlabillity. Eating ice cream too cold
freezes the tongue and deadens the senses. And as you
pointed out and Alex missed, fat content determines
mouthfeel, not just texture.

And I'll stick with philladelphia style. No eggs to
overwhelm the dairy.

Greg Zywicki

Alex Rast wrote:

Kate Connally said:

Quoted message said:

Why would you have to chisel it out? If it's kept at the
proper temperature for ice cream it shouldn't be too
hard. But given that most home refrigerator freezers are
not set for proper ice cream temp all you have to do is
zap it in the microwave for 15-20 seconds and it becomes
perfectly scoopable and the correct "hardness" for eating
and enjoying the maximum flavor.

But any time you use any heating device to "soften" ice
cream (including setting it out on the counter), you're
going to get uneven heating, and generally some melting.

That does not really happen. If you do it right there is no
melting, just softening - enough to be easily scoopable. And
another way to soften is to leave it in the refrigerator for
1/2 hour or so - not out on the counter.

Quoted message said:

Personally, I prefer no melted ice cream whatsoever. (Yes,
this means using a chilled bowl, and in the case of eating
it out of the container, wrapping paper towel around the
container so that the heat of your hands won't melt the
ice cream).

I use a towel or something around the container when I eat
out if it, but it's to keep my hands warm, not to keep the
ice cream cold.

Me, I actually give my bowl of ice cream some more time in
the microwave after scooping it to cause some melting (it's
okay here because I'm going to eat it, but it wouldn't be
okay if it were the whole carton of ice cream from which I
was going to take a portion and then put the rest back in
the freezer). I like to have my ice cream about the
consistency of frozen custard (soft-serve) which I feel to
be ideal for texture and flavor. I then sort of mash the
melted part into the still fairly solid part until I get
that texture. Currently I'm keeping a pint of Haagen Dasz on
the door of my freezer and since my fridge is really old and
inefficient the stuff on the door doesn't get too cold. Thus
the HD is perfectly scoopable, but still very firm, and
needs no microwaving. However I did this with some cheap air-
laden, fat-poor supermarket ice cream the other day and it
became so soft it was almost runny. In fact towards the end
of the carton all the ice cream "sank" to the end that was
down! Yuck. I would have kept it in the other part of the
freezer but it was there was no room for it.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Again - don't know or care about the fat/air ratio. But
whatever it is they do works for me. In my experience
more fat is better, within, of course, reason.

This is what I meant with the frozen butter example. Where
does that point of "reason" lie? Why not determine what
for you is the optimum percentage, rather than say "more
fat is better" - which doesn't give you very clear
guidelines for perfecting your recipes according to your
preferences?

Who goes around measuring the percentage of fat in the ice
creams they eat or make? (Besides you, of course,
obviously.) Who would want to go to all that trouble? I know
which ice creams to buy that have the texture I like. I have
discovered this by trial and error over the years. So, for
the most part, when I can afford them, those are the ice
creams I buy. As for the ice creams I make, I know what
recipe makes the best base and that is what I use. Therefore
I don't need to know what the percentage of fat or air is in
any of these.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Yeah, if you want to mortgage your house to buy a vanilla
bean. Do you know how much those things cost????
Yikes!!!!!

$ 1.59 in the bulk bins at my local co-op. And the beans
are super-fresh and plump.

Where the hell do you live????? Vanilla at my local co-op
bulk foods place is outrageously expensive and they are way
cheaper than supermarkets. They keep the vanilla beans under
lock and key rather than putting them out in the bulk spices
section because people would steal them. They're worth their
weight in gold. Are you seriously telling me that you can
get one whole vanilla bean for $1.59?

Quoted message said:

Even if they were up at $5-6, I would consider this a
relatively trivial expense (after all, how much, really,
is $5.00?)

Well, to me it's a lot. Must be nice to be rich.

Kate

--
Kate Connally “If I were as old as I feel, I’d be dead
already.” Goldfish: “The wholesome snack that smiles back,
Until you bite their heads off.” What if the hokey pokey
really *is* what it's all about? "][email hidden]

at Mon, 21 Jun 2004 18:51:14 GMT in <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] (Kate Connally) wrote :

Quoted message said:

Alex Rast wrote:

Kate Connally said:

Quoted message said:

Why would you have to chisel it out? If it's kept at
the proper temperature for ice cream it shouldn't be
too hard.

But any time you use any heating device to "soften" ice
cream (including setting it out on the counter), you're
going to get uneven heating, and generally some melting.

That does not really happen. If you do it right there is no
melting, just softening - enough to be easily scoopable.

The edges of the container - closest to the place where the
temperature is larger than that of the initial temperature
of the ice cream, are inevitably going to heat faster than
the center, and if that external temperature is above
freezing, they will melt. So you'll have a still-solid
center, a soft "jacket" around that, and a melted rim
around that.

If you use a microwave, you're going to exaggerate this
problem, because a microwave contains hot spots which will
cause differential heating through the container in rather
unpredictable locations.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Personally, I prefer no melted ice cream whatsoever. ...

Quoted message said:

Me, I actually give my bowl of ice cream some more time in
the microwave after scooping it to cause some melting (it's
okay here because I'm going to eat it, but it wouldn't be
okay if it were the whole carton of ice cream from which I
was going to take a portion and then put the rest back in
the freezer). I like to have my ice cream about the
consistency of frozen custard (soft-serve) which I feel to
be ideal for texture and flavor. I then sort of mash the
melted part into the still fairly solid part until I get
that texture.

My sister says that a lot of people like to do this. To
me, however, this seems like a circuitous method of
achieving a texture that you could get using different
formulations. I thought from your previous posts, that you
preferred the very dense, hard consistency of super-
premium, but it seems that this is not so - that you
prefer a texture that more closely approximates that of
Italian ice cream (gelato). Given that this is the case,
why not make/buy that? If it's exactly the texture of soft
serve that you like, why not, in turn, make/buy soft
serve? Finally, if you want an even softer consistency,
this is a "semifreddo". Same thing applies.

Is there a particular appeal to the process of letting ice
cream melt and then stirring it around? I'd like to know
what makes people choose this method over simply using the
product that has the desired texture at the outset.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Again - don't know or
care about the fat/air ratio.

It's probably not necessary for the average person to know
the specifics of fat/air ratio. But I think it would be
helpful for the average person to understand that the way
in which the fat/air ratio interacts in order to create a
range of different textures isn't reducible to a simple
linear formula.

...

Quoted message said:

As for the ice creams I make, I know what recipe makes the
best base and that is what I use.

As I said, I don't believe it's one-size-fits-all when it
comes to ice cream flavours. Thus I don't believe it's
possible to develop a standardised "base" to which you
simply add flavourings - you have to tune each recipe
specifically to the flavour being made in order to get the
best results. Have you experimented with different basic
formulations for each different flavour? Or have you
experimented with either different formulations in only one
flavour or different flavours in only one formula? If so, it
might be worth giving a shot at experimenting with what
effect each of different formulations have on the outcome of
different flavours.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Yeah, if you want to mortgage your house to buy a
vanilla bean. Do you know how much those things cost????
Yikes!!!!!

$ 1.59 in the bulk bins at my local co-op. And the beans
are super-fresh and plump.

Where the hell do you live????? Vanilla at my local co-op
bulk foods place is outrageously expensive and they are way
cheaper than supermarkets. They keep the vanilla beans
under lock and key rather than putting them out in the bulk
spices section because people would steal them.

Seattle. Pretty much all the co-ops out here keep vanilla
with all the rest of the bulk spices.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Even if they were up at $5-6, I would consider this a
relatively trivial expense (after all, how much, really,
is $5.00?)

Well, to me it's a lot. Must be nice to be rich.

If $5.00 is really so much, why buy ice cream at all? If you
are so hard up for cash that $5.00 is a major expense in an
absolute sense instead of just a relative sense, then it
would seem to me that getting ice cream at all is a luxury
you can't really afford to indulge in.

If it's only expensive in a relative sense (i.e. that on a
per-use basis the price of extract is less than that of a
bean), my point is that unless you're making ice cream so
routinely and frequently that you'd use up a considerable
number of vanilla beans on a monthly basis, the extra cost
of buying vanilla beans would hardly be a significant
fraction of your monthly income. Therefore it wouldn't be
worth much trouble trying to economise on vanilla.

--
Alex Rast [email hidden] (remove d., .7,
not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

Alex Rast said:

at Mon, 21 Jun 2004 18:51:14 GMT in
<[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Kate
Connally) wrote :

Quoted message said:

Alex Rast wrote:

Kate Connally said:

>Why would you have to chisel it out? If it's kept at
>the proper temperature for ice cream it shouldn't be
>too hard.

But any time you use any heating device to "soften" ice
cream (including setting it out on the counter), you're
going to get uneven heating, and generally some
melting.

That does not really happen. If you do it right there is
no melting, just softening - enough to be easily
scoopable.

The edges of the container - closest to the place where
the temperature is larger than that of the initial
temperature of the ice cream, are inevitably going to heat
faster than the center, and if that external temperature
is above freezing, they will melt. So you'll have a still-
solid center, a soft "jacket" around that, and a melted
rim around that.

Well, that's not what happens. Besides, I believe microwaves
supposedly heat from the inside out. Whether or not that's
the case, in my experience, the whole contained softens
almost equally much, given a not too large container - pint
and quart containers work best - there is a small difference
in softness between the outer portions and the center, but
unless you overdo it the outer portions won't melt.

Quoted message said:

If you use a microwave, you're going to exaggerate this
problem, because a microwave contains hot spots which will
cause differential heating through the container in rather
unpredictable locations.

That's why they put turntables in them. And again, I have
not found this to be a problem with my microwave or with
other microwaves I have used.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Personally, I prefer no melted ice cream
whatsoever. ...

Quoted message said:

Me, I actually give my bowl of ice cream some more time
in the microwave after scooping it to cause some melting
(it's okay here because I'm going to eat it, but it
wouldn't be okay if it were the whole carton of ice cream
from which I was going to take a portion and then put the
rest back in the freezer). I like to have my ice cream
about the consistency of frozen custard (soft-serve)
which I feel to be ideal for texture and flavor. I then
sort of mash the melted part into the still fairly solid
part until I get that texture.

My sister says that a lot of people like to do this. To
me, however, this seems like a circuitous method of
achieving a texture that you could get using different
formulations. I thought from your previous posts, that you
preferred the very dense, hard consistency of super-
premium, but it seems that this is not so

I never said I preferred hard, just dense! There's a
difference. I like very dense and rich and cream. But if you
(try to) eat it in its hard state, just out of the freezer,
you can't really enjoy those qualities because you use up
all your body heat trying to melt it enough to swallow or
you just swallow it still hard and totally miss everything.
Of course, that's just my experience. To me, in eating
totally frozen ice cream (whether dense like I like it or
less dense like you like it) causes one to miss most of the
flavor elements and all the texture elements. If you hold it
in your mouth long enough to soften it enough so that you
*could* taste the flavor and feel the texture, your mouth is
so numbed by the cold that you still can't taste or feel
anything anymore.

Quoted message said:

- that you prefer a texture that more closely approximates
that of Italian ice cream (gelato). Given that this is
the case, why not make/buy that? If it's exactly the
texture of soft serve that you like, why not, in turn,
make/buy soft serve?

Well, soft serve is not the same thing - different
ingredients and lower quality ingredients generally and very
limited flavors.

Actually there used to be a cool place here in Pgh. where
they made their own premium quality ice cream with many
different flavors - a sort of upscale Baskin- Robbins - and
they had a machine into which they would put the ice cream
as you ordered it and it sort of turned in into soft serve,
one portion at a time. Unfortunately they were only open for
a year or so. I heard that they were closed because the
machine that made the ice cream soft was not sanitary enough
or something. That was only a rumor and didn't really make
sense to me. I really miss that place.

Quoted message said:

Finally, if you want an even softer consistency, this is a
"semifreddo". Same thing applies.

But it's not the same thing!!! I don't want a semifreddo!!!
It's not ice cream!!!! I want real ice cream that is soft. I
just don't think you get it at all.

Quoted message said:

Is there a particular appeal to the process of letting ice
cream melt and then stirring it around? I'd like to know
what makes people choose this method over simply using the
product that has the desired texture at the outset.

Because you can't *get* it at the desired texture to begin
with! That's what I've been saying all along! If I could
afford to, I'd have a special freezer just for ice cream
that would hold it at the proper temperature at all times.
When one has to resort to storing their ice cream in a
refrig. freezer compartment along with other foods that must
be kept much colder, one has to be creative! Since the
invention of the microwave and my subsequent discovery that
it works perfectly for softening too-hard ice cream I'm
perfectly content. It's the ideal solution for those whose
can't afford special ice cream freezers!

I love my homemade ice cream best right from the ice cream
churn. Then it has the soft consistency I like. In fact in
the old days before good refrigeration, people couldn't
store ice cream and keep it frozen solid. When people made
homemade ice cream they ate it all up as it came from the
churn. That's the way it should be eaten as far as I am
concerned.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

As for the ice creams I make, I know what recipe makes
the best base and that is what I use.

As I said, I don't believe it's one-size-fits-all when it
comes to ice cream flavours. Thus I don't believe it's
possible to develop a standardised "base" to which you
simply add flavourings - you have to tune each recipe
specifically to the flavour being made in order to get the
best results. Have you experimented with different basic
formulations for each different flavour? Or have you
experimented with either different formulations in only
one flavour or different flavours in only one formula?

Nope, I don't have the time or energy to do that. I make
great ice cream using the system I have now. I don't feel a
need to try to "make a better ice cream". You may be
perfectly correct that one could experiment and come up with
the optimal formula for any given flavor of ice cream, but
for me I doubt the subtle differences would be worth all the
effort. This whole thing reminds me of my bil who is an
audiophile. Has a great stereo system. Is really fussy about
sound quality. Sometimes uses headphones to block out
ambient noises that would interfer. I hate headphones - I
get a sort of sensory-deprivation feeling using them - and I
don't care if there are minor scratches on an album or if I
can hear minor ambient noises while listening to music. He's
always trying to get it more perfect. I'm content with
slightly imperfect, but still really great music!

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

>Yeah, if you want to mortgage your house to buy a
>vanilla bean. Do you know how much those things
>cost???? Yikes!!!!!

$ 1.59 in the bulk bins at my local co-op. And the
beans are super-fresh and plump.

Where the hell do you live????? Vanilla at my local co-op
bulk foods place is outrageously expensive and they are
way cheaper than supermarkets. They keep the vanilla
beans under lock and key rather than putting them out in
the bulk spices section because people would steal them.

Seattle. Pretty much all the co-ops out here keep vanilla
with all the rest of the bulk spices.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Even if they were up at $5-6, I would consider this a
relatively trivial expense (after all, how much,
really, is $5.00?)

Well, to me it's a lot. Must be nice to be rich.

If $5.00 is really so much, why buy ice cream at all?

Duh! Because I like ice cream.

Quoted message said:

If you are so hard up for cash that $5.00 is a major
expense in an absolute sense instead of just a relative
sense, then it would seem to me that getting ice cream at
all is a luxury you can't really afford to indulge in.

Oh, give me a break. Because I don't want to waste $5 of my
precious money on just one of the ingredients of the ice
cream I shouldn't eat ice cream at all? I just love it when
people who can afford it tell those of us who can't that we
should just forego it! That is so bogus.

Quoted message said:

If it's only expensive in a relative sense (i.e. that on a
per-use basis the price of extract is less than that of a
bean), my point is that unless you're making ice cream so
routinely and frequently that you'd use up a considerable
number of vanilla beans on a monthly basis, the extra cost
of buying vanilla beans would hardly be a significant
fraction of your monthly income. Therefore it wouldn't be
worth much trouble trying to economise on vanilla.

Well, the whole thing is moot, anyway, because I never make
plain vanilla ice cream. I prefer fruit flavors in homemade
ice cream. I hardly ever eat plain vanilla ice cream either.
If I buy vanilla I put it in a rootbeer float or I make a
sundae, or put it on a piece of warm pie or something -
that's about as plain as I eat it. I have tasted really good
vanilla bean ice cream and it's delicious. I just don't ever
crave a bowl or cone of vanilla ice cream. So why was I
arguing about it? Well, I know what I would do if I did make
plain vanilla ice cream. It could still happen someday.
Stranger things have happened.

So, are we done now?

Kate

--
Kate Connally “If I were as old as I feel, I’d be dead
already.” Goldfish: “The wholesome snack that smiles back,
Until you bite their heads off.” What if the hokey pokey
really *is* what it's all about? "][email hidden]

at Tue, 22 Jun 2004 20:16:21 GMT in <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] (Kate Connally) wrote :

Quoted message said:

Alex Rast said:

at Mon, 21 Jun 2004 18:51:14 GMT in
<[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Kate
Connally) wrote :

Quoted message said:

Alex Rast wrote:

Kate Connally wrote:
> >Why would you have to chisel it out? If it's kept at
> >the proper temperature for ice cream it shouldn't be
> >too hard.
>
> But any time you use any heating device to "soften"
> ice cream (including setting it out on the counter),
> you're going to get uneven heating, and generally some
> melting.

That does not really happen. If you do it right there is
no melting, just softening...

The edges of the container - closest to the place where
the temperature is larger than that of the initial
temperature of the ice cream, are inevitably going to
heat faster than the center, and if that external
temperature is above freezing, they will melt.

Well, that's not what happens.

This is what has happened every time in my experience. I
wonder why our results have been so different?

Quoted message said:

Besides, I believe microwaves
supposedly heat from the inside out.

Didn't "Mythbusters" explode this belief at one point? I
can't remember for sure. IIRC, they stuck a roast in there
and found that the outside was cooked long before the
center. ...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

If you use a microwave, you're going to exaggerate this
problem, because a microwave contains hot spots...

Quoted message said:

That's why they put turntables in them.

Except that a turntable will create a toroidal "zone" of
uneven heating, so it won't eliminate the problem. You could
if you had some device that could toss the object inside
around randomly, sort of like a lottery machine, but this
wouldn't work for anything but light, unbreakable, closed-
container or solid objects.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

My sister says that a lot of people like to do this. To
me, however, this seems like a circuitous method of
achieving a texture that you could get using different
formulations. I thought from your previous posts, that
you preferred the very dense, hard consistency of super-
premium, but it seems that this is not so

I never said I preferred hard, just dense! There's a
difference. I like very dense and rich and cream. But if
you (try to) eat it in its hard state, just out of the
freezer, ... If you hold it in your mouth long enough to
soften it enough so that you *could* taste the flavor and
feel the texture, your mouth is so numbed by the cold that
you still can't taste or feel anything anymore.

IME this is true if you're storing it in a long-term, deep-
freeze freezer (a standalone unit with no refrigerator),
storing it at temperatures below F. But in a freezer that's
with a refrigerator, set to a milder temperature range, (20F
or so) that's not the case. Nonetheless, super- premium ice
cream IME is still pretty block-solid out of such a freezer,
although it melts pretty readily in the mouth.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

- that you prefer a texture that more closely
approximates that of Italian ice cream (gelato). Given
that this is the case, why not make/buy that? If it's
exactly the texture of soft serve that you like, why
not, in turn, make/buy soft serve?

Well, soft serve is not the same thing - different
ingredients and lower quality ingredients generally and
very limited flavors.

Actually there used to be a cool place here in Pgh. where
they made their own premium quality ice cream with many
different flavors...

So in your case it's more a matter of market
unavailability than of the nature of the product itself
being inherently lower-quality. That seems to suggest
there's little market for the kind of ice cream you'd
prefer. Yet, based on yourself and other people, I find
this hard to believe. I suspect there's a huge, untapped
market for high-quality, high-variety soft-serve. I wonder
why nobody's tapped into it yet?

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Finally, if you want an even softer consistency, this is
a "semifreddo". Same thing applies.

But it's not the same thing!!! I don't want a semifreddo!!!
It's not ice cream!!!! I want real ice cream that is soft.

I wasn't suggesting that this is what you really wanted. I
was just giving you what I've seen are the range of
available textures. You seem to prefer true soft-serve -
softer than gelato, harder than semifreddo.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Is there a particular appeal to the process of letting
ice cream melt and then stirring it around? I'd like to
know what makes people choose this method over simply
using the product that has the desired texture at the
outset.

Because you can't *get* it at the desired texture to begin
with! That's what I've been saying all along!...

I love my homemade ice cream best right from the ice
cream churn.

Yes, this is how you get the texture you like. It's pretty
clear based on your comments that your preferred texture is
indeed that straight from the churn. I agree that good ice
cream is hard if not impossible to find commercially in this
consistency. It would appear that to some degree you're the
victim of blindness to a market window.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> >Yeah, if you want to mortgage your house to buy a
> >vanilla bean. Do you know how much those things
> >cost???? Yikes!!!!!
>
> $ 1.59 in the bulk bins at my local co-op. And the
> beans are super-fresh and plump.

Where the hell do you live????? Vanilla at my local co-
op bulk foods place is outrageously expensive and they
are way cheaper than supermarkets. ...

Quoted message said:

> Even if they were up at $5-6, I would consider this a
> relatively trivial expense (after all, how much,
> really, is $5.00?)

Well, to me it's a lot. Must be nice to be rich.

If $5.00 is really so much, why buy ice cream at all?

Duh! Because I like ice cream.

Quoted message said:

If you are so hard up for cash that $5.00 is a major
expense in an absolute sense instead of just a relative
sense, then it would seem to me that getting ice cream at
all is a luxury you can't really afford to indulge in.

Oh, give me a break. Because I don't want to waste $5 of my
precious money on just one of the ingredients of the ice
cream I shouldn't eat ice cream at all? I just love it when
people who can afford it tell those of us who can't that we
should just forego it!

But if you like ice cream, why is the extra expense of $5.00
so unbearable? After all, a super-premium ice cream itself
costs nearly that much, so clearly $5.00 isn't an impossible
expense for you. I'm not actually advocating that you should
forgo ice cream, I'm advocating a different perspective on
whether $5.00 is a waste of precious money. In other words,
to say "getting ice cream at all is a luxury you can't
afford to indulge in" is suggesting that the poverty level
where it might be necessary or productive to consider $5.00
a waste of precious money would be so low that everyday
survival would pose a much more immediate concern than
whether you could have ice cream or not. IMHO, money is only
valuable insofar as it allows us to acquire things that are
of value to us, and if we choose to accept things of lower
value in order to retain a greater amount of money we are
making a fool's bargain - convincing ourselves indeed that
money has an absolute intrinsic value.

...

Quoted message said:

Well, the whole thing is moot, anyway, because I never make
plain vanilla ice cream. I prefer fruit flavors in homemade
ice cream.

Here we come to the crux of the matter. The extra expense of
a vanilla bean might really not bring extra value to you
simply because it's not really a flavour you prefer. In that
case, that's the argument I'd have made from the outset. You
don't need to justify your personal preferences on economic
grounds. However, with those preferences in mind, it
probably would be worth your time to seek the best fruit
available - something local, seasonal, produced by a farmer
interested in quality, and quite probably organic. Pay
whatever price you need to - although if it's local and
seasonal it'll probably still be cheaper than out-of-season,
trucked-in fruit.

--
Alex Rast [email hidden] (remove d., .7,
not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

"Kate Connally" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Kate Connally wrote:
> >Why would you have to chisel it out? If it's kept at
> >the proper temperature for ice cream it shouldn't be
> >too hard.

Mos freezers have zones that are a bit warmer than the rest
of the freezer. I keep the ice cream on the fron of the top
shelf and it is very scoopable.

Quoted message said:

Well, that's not what happens. Besides, I believe
microwaves supposedly heat from the inside out. Whether or
not that's the case, in my experience, the whole contained
softens almost equally much, given a not too large
container - pint and quart containers work best - there is
a small difference in softness between the outer portions
and the center, but unless you overdo it the outer
portions won't melt.

The waves penetrate about 1 1/2" into the products. Sugar
and fat have an infinity for the reaction and heat faster
than other portions. The 20 second zap works well on the
real hard stuff. Ed [email hidden]
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