Wayne Schmidt's Cake Batter Ice Cream Page: How to make the world's best tasting ice cream.
January of 2003 may become a hallmark date for ice cream lovers all over the world. That's when Cold Stones Ice Cream stores began serving one of the most original ice creams of all time. The new flavor, described as "so rich and amazing, it's like licking cake batter from the bowl," was first conceived by one of its franchisee in Augusta, Georgia. What makes this frozen confection so revolutionary is that unlike virtually all new ice creams released over the last 100 years, it's the first to change the texture of ice cream itself.
All ice creams and their close dairy neighbors have remained unchanged for a century. New flavors have been introduced but with the exception of special dietary desserts, the basic structure hasn't changed. New additives like cookie dough have been added, but the ice cream itself was still just ice cream. Until now.
Intending to create a new flavor, some enterprising Cold Stone's employee tried adding vanilla cake batter to unflavored mix. The unexpected result was that in addition to creating an outstanding vanilla ice cream, the extra finely ground flour and emulsifying additives in the cake batter fundamentally changed the texture of the ice cream. Cake batter ice cream doesn't just taste like rich vanilla cake batter, it also has a thick, creamy texture that also "feels" like cake batter. It is a significant improvement in frozen desserts... but there's a problem.
Recognizing what a unique product they had invented, Cold Stones wrapped the recipe in secrecy. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for us, the new ice cream's name gave away the main flavoring ingredient. It wasn't long before many alternate recipes had been developed by ice cream aficionados across the country, of whom I happen to be one. The recipe I created has a perfect balance between sweetness and flavor so that neither overpowers the other.
This page contains my recipe for vanilla cake batter ice cream and taste tests of ice creams made with other cake mix flavors. I still rate the original vanilla cake batter ice cream as the best, but all of the following recipes are delicious. I hope you'll try and enjoy them:
Basic
Recipe:
1 and 1/4 cups vanilla cake batter, sifted
1/2 cup sugar
2 pinches of salt
2 drops of yellow food coloring (for the vanilla version only)
2 cups of whipping cream (not heavy whipping cream)
1 cup of whole milk
Mix
the ingredients together and let them sit in a refrigerator for
fifteen minutes to give the flour the chance to soak up some liquid.
This prevents the ice cream from feeling gritty. Then freeze in the
ice cream maker of your choice. All the flavors are at their best if
eaten in the soft serve stage.
My family's sampled six different cake batter ice creams and the following represents our collective opinion on them:
Golden
Vanilla: The original and still the best with the strongest
cake batter texture. We prefer the richer flavor obtained by using
Betty Crocker's Golden Vanilla cake mix.
Lemon: Bright and perky without being too tart. A wonderful balance of sweet and lemony flavors that provides the sprightliness of lemon sherbet with ice cream's rich creaminess.
German Chocolate: Subtly chocolaty without being overpowering.
Chocolate Fudge: A more "in your face" chocolate impact.
Strawberry: Wonderfully clean strawberry creaminess. The most deliciously aromatic of all the flavors.
Spice: Simply glorious, like creamy ginger bread cookies.
We've tasted
many different cake mixes for cake batter ice cream and decided that
in all cases Betty Crocker mixes were the best.
