What makes soft-serve ice cream soft? (2024)

FAQs

What makes soft-serve ice cream soft? ›

Soft serve contains air, introduced at the time of freezing. The air content, called overrun, can vary from 0 to 60 per cent of the total volume of the finished product. The amount of air alters the taste of the finished product. Product with low quantities of air has a heavy, icy taste and appears more yellow.

While the machine is spinning and freezing your mix, air is also incorporated into the process. The air that is added to soft serve, known as overrun, increases the overall volume of the product, and gives the ice cream its creamy and fluffy texture.

The critical and most surprising ingredient that grants soft serve its appealing and smooth texture is air. Ice cream is made using a powdered mixture that needs added water or a liquid base mixture.

While regular ice cream is made with a higher percentage of milk fat and also includes egg yolks, soft serve does not require these ingredients. Instead, soft serve relies on a liquid base that is specially formulated to freeze quickly, resulting in its characteristic creamy texture.

Sugar, corn syrup or honey, as well as gelatin and commercial stabilizers, can all keep your ice cream at a softer consistency. Ice cream also stays softer when you store it in a shallow container, rather than a deep tub, and cover the surface of the ice cream with plastic wrap to keep ice crystals from forming.

Though there isn't a major nutritional difference between the two, soft serve ranks a little better. Sabat says it often has a high amount of air, which reduces the fat content per serving. But ice cream can also vary wildly in its fat and sugar content depending on the brand.

COST. Technically, soft serve may be less expensive to manufacture than ice cream due to having less butter fat content. The less butterfat in a mixture, the lower the cost tends to be.

Soft Serve Mixtures Have a Narrow Safe Temperature Zone

In addition to occurring due to lack of cleaning, listeria or staphylococcus bacteria can be inside the ice cream mixture itself if not properly handled.

Cylinder starvation occurs when the product level in the freezing cylinder is too low. Usually, this happens one of three ways: improper priming when first adding product to the machine, running machine in low level or a blockage preventing product from entering the freezing cylinder.

The soft texture of Soft Serve Ice Cream is a result of air and Ice Cream Mix combined inside the barrel of the Soft Machine. The taste and creaminess of Soft Serve depend significantly on the soft serve mix used.

Can you turn regular ice cream into soft serve? ›

Luckily, you can turn any ice cream into soft serve with just one trick: Mix more air into it. While the cones you find at places like McDonald's aren't actually ice cream at all, real soft serve is made with all the same ingredients as its more traditional relative.

All ice cream must be frozen quickly to avoid crystal growth. With soft serve, this is accomplished by a special machine that holds pre-mixed product at a very low, but not frozen, temperature at the point of sale.

As you churn ice cream, individual water molecules turn into ice-crystal seeds — which is what makes cream freeze. The higher the fat content, the more time you have to churn before these ice crystals congregate, resulting in creamier final texture.

Ingredients: Milk, Sugar, Cream, Corn Syrup, Natural Flavor, Mono And Diglycerides, Cellulose Gum, Guar Gum, Carrageenan, Vitamin A Palmitate.

The Ice Cream Consistency Is Too Soft or Runny

If your product was originally good texture, and is now soft it is likely that the product has been sitting in the freezing cylinder too long- this happens with all products and all soft serve freezer manufacturers.

One of the most obvious differences between soft serve and ice cream is the fact that soft serve is smoother and lighter. Many people may not know that one way that soft serve gets its creamy, softer texture is through the incorporation of air throughout its production process.

Before blending your hard ice cream, add ⅓ part heavy cream to the bowl. Blending the ice cream with the heavy cream will produce a softer, runnier mixture, which can be transferred to a Ziploc bag and left to set in the freezer.