Rehabilitating bad ice cream

Yesterday, I decided that the icy texture of my most recent ice cream would not do (despite half the batch already being eaten). The problem, as you may recall, was that the coffee swirls froze in big ice crystals despite my chemical attempt to control their texture. (I'll have to check the ingredient list on commercial ice creams with swirls to see what they use. My guess is guar gum.)

The solution was to melt the ice cream down and then gently heat it just a bit more to melt the gelatin. That didn't quite get all of it so I ran it through the blender to mechanically reduce the remaining globs.

Then I chilled it and churned it and there you go. I also boosted the cardamom as its flavor was getting lost. With the gelatin distributed throughout, the mix thickened very quickly. Not much air got churned in so I lost a lot of volume, but the texture right out of the churn was lovely. Ripening has made it lump of particularly tasty concrete, but a few minutes at room temperature should solve that easily enough.

There isn't a whole lot to go around so I'm not making an e-mail announcement that the revised version is now available. Only the coworkers who promptly read new blog posts will have a chance to try it.