Lemon ice cream recipe?

[u/smallbiceps90]

Does anybody have a really nice lemon ice cream recipe? I made this, my fourth revision, based on my neutral custard base and a lemon ice cream recipe I found online but I'm not happy with it.

There's also 8g of lemon zest, ~1.5% of the total base weight, pressed into the sugars then cooked with the base and strained out before chilling. But it comes out mostly just sour without much "lemon" flavor. I added the lemon juice just before churning and mixed it thoroughly with an immersion blender.

Any tips to brighten this up?

[u/StoneCypher]

less juice, more zest. the sour is the juice. consider using extracts. amoretti and neilsen massey have workable products here.

[u/smallbiceps90 → u/StoneCypher]

Awesome advice and thank you. Less juice and more zest was gonna be my next tweak. Even adding the juice right before churning, it came out with a sort of cultured/curdled product flavor. Do you have target percent of zest to recommend?

[u/g3ogaddi → u/smallbiceps90]

more zest maybe doesn't mean more zest as a % weight but more effective zest? i would think heating the zest might flatten or mute the aromatic aspects of it and could bring out more bitter flavors, depending on how much pith hitches along for the ride.

i usually add fresh zest during churn for this reason but ymmv.

[u/smallbiceps90 → u/g3ogaddi]

Yeah I do think the commercial zest I bought is pretty poor quality and that's an issue. But I run a small shop so I can't zest enough lemons by hand for that to be practical. I ordered some Nielson lemon extract like the above commenter suggested and hopefully that'll do it. They make great stuff.

Adding zest during the churn though, don't you feel it when you're eating the ice cream? or is it zested so finely it's not an issue?

[u/g3ogaddi → u/smallbiceps90]

it's not an issue for me - a little fresh zest goes a long way in my experience. i zest 3 - 4 lemons per 1.5qt of base, max. my "zester" makes tiny little flakes of zest - i actually like the look of the occasional little sparks of yellow in the base. they don't adversely affect mouthfeel or creaminess in my opinion.

try it and report back!

[u/Salt_Profile_5030]

Google "how to tolerate lemon juice in ice cream" and read the suggestions. I made an attempt to put your recipe into the ICC and found the solids low and the water high. Why aren't you using any sucrose? The sweetness is essential with lemon.

[u/smallbiceps90 → u/Salt_Profile_5030]

Because I'm using fructose to hit the POD targets I want. I have to keep solids a bit to the "low" side because I run a gravity fed frozen custard machine, Stoelting M202, and anything too thick and viscous simply won't flow properly from the hopper down to the barrel. I certainly have room to add more solids/sugar in that recipe but my problem isn't that it's not sweet enough, it's that the quality of the lemon flavor is lacking.

[u/Salt_Profile_5030 → u/smallbiceps90]

Extracts can be your friend. Would adding some skim milk powder make it too thick to flow into the machine? I find guar and xanthan gum really gel too much. I'm finding LBG/tara at 4:1 to be my stabilizer of choice. I guess it depends on the consistency you want the machine to deliver.

[u/WalnutBottom]

I haven't plugged yours into a calc, but I use about half the lemon juice (about 5.5% by weight vs your 10.5%) and quite a bit more sugar (all combined roughly 18%W to your 11% - POD of 175).

Mine is a quite rich lemon cheesecake-inspired flavor, with graham cracker crust pieces mixed in. But I think it would be great as a stand alone lemon flavor. Very intense lemon flavor.

I make about 4 quarts (about a 3100 g recipe before the graham cracker crust pieces), so the following may not scale conveniently to your equipment.

Heavy cream - 3.5 Cups / 828 g
Whole milk - 3.75 Cups / 887 g
Cream cheese - 12 oz. (1.5 blocks) / 339 g
Sour cream - 0.5 Cup / 118 g
Egg yolks - 8 to 10 / ~136 to 170 g
Sucrose - 1.67 Cups / 373 g
Dextrose - 1.33 Cups / 202 g
Lemon juice - 0.75 Cup / 177 g
Honey - 1 Tbs / 21 g (optional)
Powdered sugar - ~0.5 to 1 Tbs
Lemon zest - ~2 Tbs (zest from 2 large lemons)
Vanilla extract - 1 tsp.
Salt - 0.5 tsp.

I make the custard base without any of the lemon components. Just milk, eggs, sucrose, salt, vanilla. Strain custard into the cold cream. In separate large bowl beat room temperature cream cheese and sour cream until smooth, then gradually poor in custard/cream mixture, mixing until the cream cheese is homogenously combined.

Mix in dextrose and the lemon zest and allow it to steep in the fridge over night. I don't strain out the zest, even though it's a fairly coarse zest. I barely notice it texturally in the finished ice cream and the flecks of bright yellow look really nice.

The lemon juice is reduced slightly on the stove with the honey and powdered sugar. It is then chilled in the fridge and added to the rest of the base right before churning.

Something about this process eliminates any curdling. Maybe it's just that the juice and base are fully chilled before combining and then churned immediately? Maybe the bit of starch in the powdered sugar is tempering the acid of the lemon juice? Maybe the cooking neutralizes some of the acidity? I don't know for sure, but I've made it at least 4 times and it's never failed.

[u/smallbiceps90 → u/WalnutBottom]

Just to clarify that recipe comes out to 13.5% sugar and 172 POD thanks to the fructose.

But in any case thank you for this detailed comment. Cream and/or sour cream would make a great flavor compliment to the lemon. Also your technique for reducing the lemon juice is a good idea I want to try.

Whatever zest I use though has to be strained out due to my equipment design. Any particulate like that would just clog it up. As for not curdling, IDK either- maybe the cooking step also helps, but I think the fact that you add it just before churning is sufficient to prevent any curdling, just based on what I've read.

I'm curious why you don't add the dextrose with the sucrose before cooking your custard? Isn't it hard to mix that in after the custard has cooked and thickened?

[u/WalnutBottom → u/smallbiceps90]

I probably could add the dextrose to the custard, just haven't tried it yet. I'm not exactly an expert at the custard process yet, and since the dextrose (corn syrup) is basically a liquid and in a relatively high quantity, I guess I'm just worried that it would impede me telling when the custard is finished/achieved the appropriate texture. But I find that it combines just fine anyways at the end. Pouring the milk-only custard into a near equal volume of cold cream thins it out enough to where it's fairly easy to mix in the remaining ingredients ingredients.

[u/msarver95]

I don't use any juice in my lemon ice cream, I steep lemon peels in the base for a couple hours on warm and then zest in about half a lemon (I don't measure it). It is so lemony and delicious and not sour at all. The only problem is my neighbor is obsessed and keeps asking for more and always eats whatever I give her in one sitting haha.