Ice cream fail: How to make ice cream that will cause you diabetes

I was flipping through an old issue of a supposedly authoritative food magazine and got the shock of my life.

There was a little feature about making ice cream at home and this was one of the recipes they provided: To make 1 litre of Basil Ice Cream, you need 500g of sugar!

This means that half of the total weight of ice cream is actually made out of sugar!

No doubt you will get an ice cream with a super smooth texture because there is a lot of sugar used (Remember: More sugar used, the smoother the texture). But I don't know how is it possible to consume an ice cream that is this sweet. And I can't imagine how it is even possible to taste the basil.

Eating this will make you sick. Epic fail. Period.

Is it possible to make cola/ soda ice cream at home?

One question I get quite often is whether it is possible to make a cola-based ice cream that would have a fizzy buzz accompanied by a full-bodied flavour and texture. Kind of like having an ice cream float but with more cola and less float but still creamy and rich.

Well, to find out, I waddled through some recipes from books. And here is one recipe for a cola ice cream I found (it is touted as being a hit with kids):

200g sugar
250ml milk
250ml cream
One can of soda

Yup. It is that simple. That's it. (But of course, there's always more to the story.)

According to the recipe, all you have to do is to pour the sugar and milk into a pot, heat it until the sugar melts and let the mixture simmer for 15 minutes to rid it of some moisture.

When the mixture has cooled, add one can of soda and whipping cream, leave it to freeze and hand churn it (or use an ice cream maker) and you are on your way to cola ice cream glory.

Wait a minute... This doesn't make sense. One thing that caught my eye is that there are no eggs in the recipe to act as an emulsifier to bind all that liquid and fat together.

So the only way to find out whether this recipe - touted as a hit with kids - works, I tried it out.

And what did I discover?

The supposed soda ice cream belongs to the category of Epic Fail. And here's why:

- The soda is too mild and is covered by the taste of cream
- The ice cream is too icy due to too much liquid
- There is no way you can scoop this mess into a ball of scoopable ice cream, so it practically failed the "scoopable-ice-cream-test"
- This is way too diabetes-inducing
- And if it is a hit with kids, kids have bad taste and you shouldn't trust children to make good chefs

Moral of the story: Not all recipe books for ice cream works. Book writers are also book sellers. They just want you to part with some of your money. And any recipe that just wants you to make ice cream without some form of emulsifier is just pulling your leg. You'll be glad to produce something that half resembles a mangled sorbet.

Epic fail.

Major fail: Star fruit (a.k.a Carambola) ice cream

There is a reason why you do not find certain flavours of ice cream being sold commercially. Never ever have I encountered star fruit-flavoured ice cream. Ever. (For jargon geeks, star fruit is also known as Carambola.)

So, the only way to find out how star fruit ice cream would taste like, I set out experimenting.

Oh boy. Major fail.

So here is a summary of how I went about doing it:

Step 1: Bought a ripe star fruit from the supermarket (those with some brown spots, but not too many).

Step 2: Trimmed off the tough edges, removed seeds and blended it in a blender with some sugar and water.

Step 3: Sieved the starfruit puree and sauteed the finely blended pulp till slightly gooey to remove any excess moisture.

Step 4: Created a simple ice cream custard using egg yolk (one whole yolk), cream (50ml), milk (50ml) and sugar (20g).

Step 5: Added starfruit puree just before allowing the whole mixture to set in freezer, and proceeded with hand whisking the ice cream.

When ice cream was set firm, it looked decent. Like how coconut ice cream looks like.

When I ate it, I thought, "My condolences..."

Moral of the story: Star fruit is a pale and mild fruit from the tropics. It tastes so mild and pale it should probably be eaten on its own. The cream and milk totally killed any remnants of star fruit. The only reminder of star fruit is the blended waxy pulp.

Maybe it'll work as a sorbet, but as an ice cream, it'll probably need a boost of essence or extract for it to work.