Pastry chefs often use weight measures rather than volumetric measures to maintain consistency in a recipe.
On King Arthur Flour’s blog, they point out why weighing your ingredients is the best way to go:
- It Saves Time: You don’t have to worry about messing with leveling off measuring cups.
- Accuracy: When measuring ingredients by volume, what you’re actually measuring could be different each time you use the recipe, and could be pretty far off the mark of where the recipe was calibrated. For example, the cup of cocoa powder measured out for a chocolate cake could have been overshot by 3 tablespoons simply because it was packed into the measuring cup, or tapped on the counter to make the top level.
- Consistency with Recipes and Portion Size: When you’re measuring with precision, your recipes will turn out the same every single time. When it comes to portion sizes, if you need to divide a batch of cookie or bread dough into a specific number of portions, simply weigh the full batch of dough and divide by the number of portions needed. This method is perfect when making a braided loaf of bread, or when dividing a batch of cake batter among a specific number of pans. Always measuring by weight is every professional bakery’s secret to perfect uniformity.
- Increasing or Decreasing Recipe Size is Easy: Multiplying a recipe by 1.5 is complicated when you’re dealing with fractions like 1/3 and 7/8. Most digital kitchen scales can toggle between pounds, ounces, and grams. Multiplying by those whole numbers is easy.
- Easier Cleanup: Measuring sticky ingredients like peanut butter, honey, or mayonnaise isn’t very fun and always leaves messy measuring cups to clean up. When measuring by weight, you will decrease the amount of dishes you need to wash dramatically.
Recipe
All measurements in volume are approximate.
138g whole milk (a little more than ½ cup)
70g fennel bulb, minced (1/4 cup)
1000g blueberries (2.2 lbs or 3 pints)
3g table salt (1/2 tsp)
350g sugar* (1 3/8 cup)
3 pc whole egg
575g cream (2 3/8 cups)
10g vanilla paste* (or 1 vanilla bean, scraped)
Method
In a small sauce pan, add the milk and fennel and heat to just below a simmer. Allow to infuse for 1 hour over low heat.
Strain the milk & fennel through a chinois or fine mesh strainer into a large bowl. Reweigh the milk and add more milk if it weighs less than 138g or is less than a ½ cup.
Allow the infused milk to cool below 145°F. This is important to avoid to avoid scalding the eggs.
Blend the infused milk and remaining ingredients together until the sugar and salt are dissolved.
Chill mixture thoroughly (at least 1 hour) either in the refrigerator or in an ice bath.
Add the chilled mixture to your ice cream maker and follow the instructions provided by the manufacturer.
* You can replace the sugar & vanilla paste with 350g of BEAUTIFUL BRINY SEA’s Pocketful of Starlight Vanilla Sugar.
