I find new ice cream recipe ideas almost every day. Whenever we go on trips we always look up the best rated local ice cream shops, and try a number of their flavors. We make notes of what we liked or didn’t, and which flavors we want to try at home. We were recently on a trip to the Southwest and had Green Chili Pinion ice cream, New Mexico S’mores with Biscochito cookie ice cream, and Pumpkin Spice Praline pecan. It is fun to try regional specialties.
We also get lots of recipe ideas from our friends. When we share our ice cream with them they ask us if we have tried this flavor or that flavor that is one of their favorites. This is how we created our Maple Walnut, Chunky Monkey Copycat, Lychee, Mango, Tamarind, Butterscotch Cashew Crunch, and other recipes. If we have that recipe, we make them a batch. If we don’t have a recipe, we look up recipes online or in cookbooks and then try making using our Ice Cream Base Mix. We adjust the new recipes each time we make it, noting what we and the friends we made it for liked or didn’t like and suggestions to improve it.
We also do blind taste tests. We might make half a dozen versions of a given flavor using flavorings from different suppliers, or with different amounts of flavoring. We put them in numbered bowls and have everyone sample them and rank order them from best to worst, without them knowing what is different between the different versions.
It is very important to get honest specific feedback from everyone. It is much more helpful for someone to say “I think it needs more cocoa powder” or “I think the lemon is too tart for me”, rather than just telling you its great.
There are so many interesting flavors. People all over the country and all over the world love ice cream with many new flavors. Some people love spumoni, licorice, kiwi, or other flavors. Some of the ones we have tried became favorites of ours. Others we have tried are not our favorites, like squid ink ice cream, or roasted garlic ice cream, but it is always good to be open to trying new recipes.
Another way we get new recipe ideas is to think about other desserts or tastes we love. I grew up loving homemade baked lemon pudding. My wife improved that recipe by adding blackberries. We then translated that baked desert into our lemon blackberry ice cream, which became one of our all time favorites.
Sometimes, rather than make a whole batch of a new recipe, I make a batch of our Ice Cream Base Mix.
I divide the frozen ice cream up into individual spoonful’s and weigh them, then add a few drops of the recommended Ice Cream Flavoring or Fruit or other add-ins, weighing everything carefully. I and my family try it, discuss how to improve it by adding more or less of the flavoring, adding other ingredients, etc. In this way we can narrow in on a good ice cream flavor before scaling up to full batches so that we don’t have to make multiple full scale batches that we may not like.
