Introduction to Making Frozen Desserts

Introduction to Making Frozen Desserts

Frozen desserts include ice cream, frozen custard, frozen yogurt, gelato, sherbet, and novelties. Manufacturers usually offer multiple flavors, with standards like vanilla and chocolate, a range of fun flavors (fruit, swirls and candy pieces), and seasonal flavors (pumpkin pie).

Knowing the products you are going to make will determine the ingredients, processing equipment, and facility requirements you will need.

There are regulations specific to frozen desserts that the manufacturer needs to know, such as fat and solids contents, and labeling requirements for real and artificial vanilla flavorings.

Dairy ingredients used in frozen desserts are cream, milk, and dry milk powder. Other ingredients include sweeteners, and stabilizers and emulsifiers to improve texture. Flavorings include liquids like vanilla, powders like cocoa, fruits, nuts, swirls, and candy and cookie pieces.

Ice cream is made using the following steps:

1. Blend the base mix ingredients together.
2. Pasteurize
3. Homogenize the mix to get the fat well-distributed.
4. The mix is aged to improve the texture of the final product.
5. Liquid flavorings, like vanilla, are added before freezing.
6. The mix is frozen using a batch or continuous freezing process.
7. After freezing, flavorings like fruit, candy, cookie pieces, and swirls are added using specialized equipment, or by hand.
8. Then the ice cream is packaged.
9. Finally, it is sent to the hardening room to complete the freezing process.

It is important to understand that making a frozen dessert formula is different than writing a recipe, because ingredients may vary in composition. For example: your cream may be 38% fat one day and 42% fat on a different day. To optimize costs, you need to determine the composition of your base mix (for example, 12% fat, 11% nonfat milk solids, and 14% sugar). You can then blend the appropriate amount of ingredients needed to have a consistent, quality product. There are computer programs and other resources available to help you with these calculations.

When thinking about your product line, consider the number and type of ingredients you need to keep on inventory. Some ingredients are stored at room temperature, and others need refrigerated or frozen storage. Ingredients that contain allergens, such as nuts and cookie pieces, require an allergen storage and use plan to prevent contamination of non-allergen products.

Knowing how automated you want your production line to be and the range of flavors you want to make before you start will allow you to construct your facilities with the appropriate spaces, and purchase the correct equipment, supplies, and ingredients to create your own unique line of frozen desserts.

This program was developed by Food Safety CTS, LLC for Penn State University.