What Makes Soft-Serve Ice Cream Soft? (2024)

FAQs

What Makes Soft-Serve Ice Cream Soft? ›

The liquid base mix (either the reconstituted powder or pre-mix) is added to the holding compartment of a soft serve freezer. While the mixture is freezing, air is simultaneously being beaten into it. The process of whipping the ice cream mix as it is freezing creates smaller ice crystals, meaning softer ice cream.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Dairy Queen soft serve is a delicious reduced fat ice cream containing the following ingredients: Milkfat and Nonfat Milk, Sugar, Corn Syrup, Whey, Mono and Diglycerides, Artificial Flavor, Guar Gum, Polysorbate 80, Carrageenan and Vitamin A Palmitate.

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

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.

Just like regular ice cream, soft serve starts out with a base of milk, cream, and sugar, but it's typically unflavored and (like most commercial ice cream) contains a small amount of added emulsifiers and stabilizers.

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 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.

The liquid base mix (either the reconstituted powder or pre-mix) is added to the holding compartment of a soft serve freezer. While the mixture is freezing, air is simultaneously being beaten into it. The process of whipping the ice cream mix as it is freezing creates smaller ice crystals, meaning softer ice cream.

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.