Recipes for Bad Bellies: Fructose Friendly Ice Cream

I have recently been experimenting with making ice cream, using my ice cream machine, and adapting recipes to make them more fructose friendly. So far, I have been using recipes from The Ice Cream Book, by Joanna Farrow and Sara Lewis. I would like to share a couple of these with you in today's post.

For now, I will focus on cream-based ice cream, which is made with a custard.

The basic recipe for the custard is as follows:

Ingredients

4 egg yolks

75g caster sugar

1 tsp corn flour (which I substituted with potato flour)

300ml low fat milk

300ml whipping cream

Instructions

• Whisk the egg yolks, caster sugar and cornflour (or potato flour) until the mixture is thick and foamy.
• Pour the low fat milk into a large saucepan. Heat the milk on the stove and bring it just to a boil, and then slowly pour in the egg yolk mixture, whisking constantly.
• Using a double boiler technique (one pan with water underneath the pan with the custard), heat the custard slowly, stirring constantly. Once it thickens and the colour turns from off-white to yellow, remove from the heat and leave to cool.

• Add additional flavours (see below).
• Once the custard and other ingredients have cooled, stir in the whipping cream and then add the whole mixture to the ice cream machine. Churn for 25-30min until thick. Once ready, spoon the ice cream out of the ice cream machine and into a plastic container, then leave in freezer to set over night.

Note that I substituted potato flour for the corn flour, as potato flour has a similar consistency to corn flour and does not have a strong flavor. Considering the corn flour is just used as a thickening agent, potato flour is sufficient as a substitute.

Using this custard base, I have made two variations of ice cream – Chocolate Ripple, and Chunky Chocolate. 

Below are my versions of these recipes:

Chocolate Ripple Ice Cream

Additional ingredients

250g dark chocolate, broken into squares

25g butter

30ml golden syrup

90ml full cream

Instructions

• After preparing the custard mixture, add 150g of dark chocolate and stir until melted. Remove this chocolate custard mixture from the heat and leave to cool.

• Put the remaining dark chocolate into another saucepan and add the butter. Heat gently, stirring until melted and combined. Add the full cream and heat until smooth, then remove from the heat and leave to cool.
• Once the custard mixture and whipping cream have been churned in the ice cream machine, spoon out the ice cream into a plastic container, alternating layers of ice cream and chocolate sauce. This recipe makes approximately 1.5L of ice cream. Leave in freezer to set over night.

Note that the use of golden syrup in this recipe means that it is already fructose friendly, as golden syrup is a fructose friendly alternative to honey.

Chunky Chocolate Ice Cream

Additional ingredients

200g milk chocolate

50g dark chocolate

50g white chocolate

Instructions

• Once the custard mixture has been prepared, add break 150g of milk chocolate into small pieces and add to the custard, and stir over the heat until melted. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.
• Chop the remaining milk chocolate, as well as the dark chocolate and white chocolate. Mix the three types of chocolate in a bowel and leave to the side.
• Once the chocolate custard mixture and whipping cream have been churned in the ice cream machine, gently fold in the chocolate pieces. Spoon out the ice cream into a plastic container, and then leave in the freezer to set over night. This recipe makes approximately 1.5L of ice cream.