Ah, the quest for perfection

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

Sometime you get it on the first try. Sometimes it never comes at all.

I'm on my third batch of pear ice cream and somehow the right flavor and texture is still eluding me. The current batch turned custard in the fridge and then turned grainy in the ice cream maker. I've tried many of the suggestions that were made previously but so far, none of them have provided a strong enough pear flavor to punch through the taste of the balsamic glazed pecans I want to put into it.

Speaking of the pecans, its so warm and humid that the batch of pecans I made refuses to dry and is sitting on my counter acting like taffy. Ugh. I took the lot of them and tossed them in a bowl in the fridge. Hopefully once they are cool enough they will harden up and crumble into small bits like they are supposed to.

As a contrast, I'm currently making a clove and orange sorbet. I've only got three quarters of the ingredients put together and already it smells spectacular. This one is going to be a knockout.

Why can't they all be this way?

Now on to the Maple Scotch Scotch Bonnet....

Comments

[tikvah.livejournal.com]

Clove and orange sounds goooooooooood...

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

I made a pear puree and then strained it, which definitely seems to help with texture so far.

[beah.livejournal.com]

I had a pear brandy that was very pear-y and might be nummy, though it won't freeze as well.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

As I'm standing there in the kitchen making my ice cream mixes today I got to thinking...

Have you tried using canned pears? or are you using fresh pears and/or just juice.

Maybe trying canned pears in their own juice or in heavy syrup and pureeing them might give you a stronger pear flavor.

I found using the heavy syrup gives more flavor to the pear bread than using in their own juice ones.

Just a thought.

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

That is a thought. I'll see if I have time to pick some up. My most recent batch used pear baby food and fresh pears. The fresh pears seemed to create the texture problem/

[donnad.livejournal.com]

So here we are having a similar problem that you are having only using cherries. G has it in his head to do a Cherry-lime ice cream but we aren't getting enough cherry flavor and the lime is overpowering. Then we realized we had a case of various Torani syrups (http://www.torani.com/) kicking around. Did we have cherry? Yes, so we are trying a Torani cherry syrup as part of the sweetener, cutting the sugar and adding a comercial syrup. I don't know if Torani makes a pear syrup as well. And It's likely too late for this year, but something to think about for the future.