baitcon | Ice Cream

There are a few things I would humbly suggest about the ice cream making process:

1) Use a different labeling mechanism. The clipped on index cards were too prone to falling off. It's also not clear to me that some of the containers were ever labeled in the first place. ~~It's a little more expensive, but Sharpie on colored gaff tape would be a lot more robust.~~ [See addendum.]

2) Have a full ingredient list. ~~One idea I had for this is to use a rolodex. When the ice cream is mixed, it gets numbered, and a rolodex cards gets filled out with the ingredient list.~~ [See addendum.] People can flip through this at their leisure. When the ice cream is served, the card is pulled out and affixed to it at the serving table (or perhaps affixed to the table). Anything without a number doesn't get frozen.

3) What ever happened to the ethereals? Have they been tried with LN2? ISTR they were popular back in the day.

4) Pack some dry ice in the freezer(s) to get things cold. This will require some careful planning so the ice cream isn't too hard at serving time, but it should be workable.

I'm willing to implement any or all or the above.

Addendum:

1) There have been various suggestions of how to affix labels better. Phil's idea (the billboard covering material), in particular, is worth following up on.

2) After some discussion, I think I'm leaning toward putting the ingredient lists in a binder instead. The pages can be taken out and pasted to the tables before serving begins. Again, anything without a number/list doesn't get frozen or served.

3) If someone sends me the recipe(s), I'll try out ethereals and consider reviving them next year.

Also, a point I mentioned in a comment: I suggest doing away with the large buckets, and instead splitting the popular flavors and serving them at multiple tables. I think this would reduce congestion at least a little.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

fixx.livejournal.com

It would not be necessary to connect the label with the container at all at serving time if the label is connected to the location the ice cream is served. I can imagine two ways of doing this, but each one requires some engineering in advance.

Instead of putting containers of various sizes on a table, the containers, at least the smaller quart size ones, could be placed in troughs, not unlike the plastic window boxes that hardware stores sell. Then instead of attaching the labels, cards or whatever from the trough, itself, the cards would get clothespinned to a wire bale that is attached to the trough where it would get more light and be easier to read. I can see how the bale could get knocked off in a feeding frenzy but hopefully a more orderly serving system would be initiated at the same time.

An alternative to the bale would be to place the trough near some other surface where the flavor cards (and ingredients) could be posted in the same sequence nearby and clearly visible from the trough location. These signs could be supported off of a table, building, even a wire strung overhead between two conveniently placed trees.

More elegant but less practical versions of this could involve longer trough designs or even boards with holes cut out to hold the ice cream containers in their sequential locations.

From:

mycroft.livejournal.com

It would not be necessary to connect the label with the container at all at serving time if the label is connected to the location the ice cream is served.

That's true. The information could be posted in advance if we know which serving station it's going to.

The trough idea probably isn't going to work, though, for a couple of reasons. The big one is that having all the containers packed together is highly suboptimal -- they need to be spread out on the table to allow parallel access.

From:

dragonsea

How about something like a 1x12 with holes cut in to act like collars? Ice cream container goes in hole. Flavor name/description goes next to it- for instance an index card inside a ziplock bag (readable and changeable yet protected and secured). 1 flavor per 18" allows spacing. Might even allow for more leverage when chipping out sampled of rock-hard ice creams.

From:

fixx.livejournal.com

[pardon me, I accidentally posted this anonymously, now corrected and very slightly edited]

highly suboptimal -- they need to be spread out on the table to allow parallel access.

I would agree, *if* the playing field were even, but it isn't. What you refer to as parallel access results in less agressive people getting squeezed out. With a trough approach, two people could scoop "in parallel" one on either side if the trough were supported up the center by some means I can only imagine at this time.

The reason I suggested the "longer trough designs or even boards with holes cut out" was to suggest a lower density in turn providing greater access for what you call "parallel access". That becomes less significant if there are enough trough locations, and as cheap as these plastic window boxes can be, we could easily afford to have only three or four flavors in each one, instead of the five or six they could hold and still benefit from the layout for labeling. Re

turtleduck's spacing suggestion, three flavors in each (typically) 3' trough would be about one flavor for every 18".

I'm not suggesting this is the perfect solution. I'm merely suggesting that attempting to place ANY sort of label down low and attached to the ice cream itself is effectively suboptimal, if only because there is rarely enough light to read it by, and the related risk the label could come off.

While I'm on this subject the solution I suggested elsewhere for dispensing small amounts of ice cream to each person could be solved by use of a coring tool not unlike this one: http://www.kitchengadgetsonline.co.uk/contents/media/C20502.jpg, although a clean way of pushing the core out would still need to be devised unless there is a corer with integral pusher.

From:

mycroft.livejournal.com

To a certain extent, I agree that the feeding frenzy isn't what I would prefer. However, given the sheer volume of flavors, and the fact that the ice cream already melts fairly quickly, I'm not sure slowing it down would be beneficial overall.

In the Old Days, when there were many fewer flavors and fewer attendees, ISTR they were all lined up on a single table and it was a much more polite affair.

Adding another serving session on Saturday afternoon would probably help. I know this has been bandied about. We need to solve the freezer problem for that to be possible, though.

I'd also suggest doing away with large buckets completely. Any flavor that's popular enough to warrant a large batch should almost certainly be split and served at multiple tables instead.

From:

mycroft.livejournal.com

The ideal device for pulling out small portions is probably a melon baller. However, it's not clear to me that apportioning this way would work -- I suspect people would just use their own spoons, which is much worse from a contamination POV. (Some people already do this because they're impatient.)

From:

vvalkyri.livejournal.com

Hm, I'd been commenting elsewhere about melon/butter ballers, but that's a good point - people get impatient. Other problem is I'm not sure whether it's particularly easy to get stuff /out/ of a melon baller :)

What about a bunch of us hit the thrift shops looking for decently strong tea/tablespoons at a dime to a quarter each*, and as things go out to be served a couple of the spoons get jabbed into the flavor. Flavors that are too hard frozen might get a spade instead.

I also thought

koshmom's idea of ziplocks was interesting in terms of decreased cleanup.

* my father's avocation is thriftshopping; if I give him a goal he'll find it, even if that's asking for 30 melon ballers across a year

From:

fixx.livejournal.com

It is possible you have had more favorable experiences using mellon ballers to serve ice cream. I've tried using self-tipping mellon ballers previous to this discussion and despite the similar design, it did not seem to work the same way.

I've recently drawn up a design for an easy to fabricate out of off the shelf components, self-limiting, self-dispensing ice cream serving tool that will cost "us" almost nothing (in other words I think I can provide enough for an entire Baitcon without putting myself in hock)

By "Self-limiting", I mean that though not precise, it will max out a bit over 1 tsp if forced
By "Self-dispensing", I mean it should eject ice cream with a minimum of surface for adhesion so it probably will not require a second implement to separate ice cream from it.

I intend to build one and test it before I submit my design here. If I do so photos will be provided. Estimated cost per each is under 50cents. They should be machine washable and rustproof. On the downside this design will not penetrate rock hard ice dream, nor can I see a way around that other than patience or use of other implements.

Althought I intend to put at least 5 minutes into building the first one, my estimated fabrication time per each in quantity (such as the first 50 or so) is closer to 1 minute. Assuming this works, how many would you like to see?

Regarding the use of personal spoons and contamination. Personal spoons were used a couple of ways. More than a few people used them to scoop directly, many more used their spoons to separate the ice cream from the scoops. I was using a compartmentalized bowl I'd brought which also made it easier to knock the ice cream off the scoop. Sadly I had people offering to help me with THEIR SPOONS because they got so impatient waiting for me to turn over the scoop to them.

PS: Baitcon is now a week ago and my stomach still has not quited down, fortunately I bought the bulk sized Imodium.