Reduced-sugar vanilla ice cream

Vanilla cream ice cream in which erythritol replaces some of the sugar. A third less sugar, still creamy and scoopable.

Sugar in ice cream isn’t only there for sweetness — it determines how hard the ice cream will be straight from the freezer. If you simply cut it, the ice cream freezes rock hard. So this recipe replaces about half the sugar with erythritol, which softens ice cream even more than sugar does, plus a little dextrose. The healthier side: about 13 g of sugars per 100 g (including milk sugar), about 165 kcal instead of roughly 215 for the classic egg-yolk version, and less fat. The trade-off: it is less sweet, erythritol has a slight cooling aftertaste, and in larger amounts it is a laxative.

Type: Classic cream ice cream · Servings: 8 · Difficulty: Moderate

Equipment

Ingredients

  • 500 g whole milk 3.5 %
  • 250 g whipping cream 33 %
  • 40 g skimmed milk powder
  • 60 g erythritol (ideally powdered)
  • 50 g granulated sugar (sucrose)
  • 25 g dextrose (glucose powder)
  • 1.5 g locust bean gum (carob gum, E410)
  • 0.5 g guar gum (E412)
  • 3 g vanilla pod (1 pod)

Making the mix

  1. Split the vanilla pod lengthways and scrape out the seeds.
  2. Mix the dry ingredients: erythritol, sugar, dextrose, skimmed milk powder, locust bean gum (carob gum, E410) and guar gum.
  3. Heat the milk and cream with the vanilla seeds and pod to 40 °C and, whisking constantly, pour in the dry mix.
  4. Heat to 85 °C and hold for 2 minutes (pasteurisation, hydrating the stabilisers). Don’t boil.
  5. Cool in a bowl of iced water, cover and leave to age in the fridge for at least 4 hours. Remove the pod and blend the mix briefly with a stick blender.

Method — Compressor ice cream maker

  1. Switch on the ice cream maker 5–10 minutes in advance so the bowl pre-chills.
  2. Pour in the chilled mix (no higher than the fill line) and churn for 30–40 minutes until it has the consistency of a thick cream.
  3. Transfer to a chilled container, cover the surface with cling film and leave to harden in the freezer for about 120 minutes.

Total time: 7 h 30 min

Method — Freezer-bowl ice cream maker

  1. Freeze the bowl for at least 24 hours in advance. Take it out just before use, fit the paddle and switch the machine on.
  2. With the machine running, pour in the thoroughly chilled mix — filling the bowl no more than two-thirds full; freeze the rest as a second batch.
  3. Churn for 20–30 minutes until the mix thickens. Going on longer is pointless — the bowl has already warmed up.
  4. Transfer to a chilled container and leave to harden in the freezer.

Total time: 8 h 20 min

Method — Ninja CREAMi and similar machines

  1. Pour the mix into the CREAMi tub up to the MAX line (one or two tubs, depending on their size), put the lid on and freeze level for 24 hours.
  2. Put the tub in the machine and run the Lite Ice Cream program.
  3. If the result is crumbly or powdery, add 1–2 tablespoons of milk and run Re-spin — with a very cold freezer even twice.

Programme: Lite Ice Cream

Total time: 29 h

Stages

Preparation
15 min
Cooking
10 min
Cooling
30 min
Ageing in the fridge
4 h
Churning
35 min
Hardening in the freezer
2 h
Total time
7 h 30 min

Plan: what to do and when

The whole recipe takes 7 h 30 min, of which 25 min is hands-on — the rest is waiting you can spend elsewhere.

The making itself fits into a single day — start at least 7 h 30 min before serving.

  • Prepare the mix (weigh and stir the ingredients) — 15 min
  • Cook the mix — 10 min
  • Cool the mix down — 30 min
  • Let the mix age in the fridge — 4 h
  • Churn in the machine — 35 min
  • Let it harden in the freezer — 2 h

Serving and storage

From the freezer, let it stand for 5–10 minutes. Excellent with baked fruit, which adds sweetness without added sugar.

Up to a week. Erythritol tends to crystallise over time and the ice cream then turns slightly “sandy” — which is why the recipe doesn’t use more of it.

Tips

  • Don’t replace all the sugar with erythritol: the ice cream would be less sweet, with a cooling aftertaste, and the erythritol would crystallise in it.
  • Xylitol is as sweet as sugar, but it is a stronger laxative and is poisonous to dogs — don’t use it in ice cream a dog might lick.
  • You can fine-tune the sweetness with a drop of stevia; don’t count it in grams in the recipe — it has no effect on the composition of the mix.

Why it works

Anti-freezing power (PAC) tells you how much a substance lowers the freezing point — the higher it is, the softer the ice cream at −18 °C. Sugar has a PAC of 100, dextrose about 190 and erythritol about 280, because its molecules are small. The sweetening power (POD) of erythritol is only about 70 % of sugar’s. So 60 g of erythritol, 50 g of sugar and 25 g of dextrose soften the ice cream as much as a much larger dose of sugar would, but they are less sweet — the ice cream is gently sweet. In larger amounts polyols are laxative; EFSA has set a safe daily intake for erythritol of 0.5 g per kg of body weight. A 100 g portion of this ice cream contains about 6.5 g.

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Articles that mention this recipe

How we calculate the composition · What PAC and POD mean · Balance this mix in the calculator

Sources