05/02/2026
Ice cream is a fickle beast. Recipe balance… sugars, solids, fats, emulsifiers, & stabilizers. Cure time. Churning time, temperature, & speed. Changing any of these factors WILL change the ice cream.
When I first started this business, I was scaling up with recipes that weren’t built for commercial equipment. Their high butterfat percentage and lack of stabilizers became obvious when I got my first commercial batch freezer. What churned beautifully at the lower speed of my Musso machines turned into icy butter on my Carpigiani. At that time, I didn’t have much of an understanding on how to actually formulate a base from scratch that would work in a big, powerful machine.
I gave up after an exhausting and expensive week of failed batches, and started working with a commercial ice cream mix. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with commercial mix, it wasn’t what I was used to and it definitely limited what I could do.
When I started over last year, I had time to learn and experiment with my ice cream base. Formulating a great base is something I find exciting again! This week, I’ve been learning the ropes of my new equipment— a very small commercial batch freezer that I’ll call Gigi. Gigi is powerful, much like my first batch freezer (Giana), but doesn’t have some features that would make things easier for someone making their own base. No overrun control— so there’s no way to adjust the RPM for a richer base to avoid buttering. No sensor—I need to know exactly when each recipe should be pulled (also, to avoid buttering). I’m learning to speak Gigi’s language and figuring out where I can make recipe adjustments. Sometimes I’m getting it wrong and spending my day trying to get frozen butter out of the drum. Sometimes, I get it right and the ice cream is absolutely gorgeous.
Long story short, this process can be a scary one. It’s expensive, it’s exhausting, and it sometimes leads me to question whether I know what I’m doing. Getting to share the results with you always brings everything into perspective. So while I may not have many exciting photos to share, I can promise that there’s hard earned ice cream waiting to be enjoyed Sunday.
