A collaboration between Cotswold Ice Cream Company and Best Coffee Beans of Cheltenham may have solved the common problem of creating satisfactory coffee flavourings in catering-trade ice-cream.
There have in the past been many attempts at a coffee-flavoured ice-cream, not all of which have been successful.
In many cases, the ice-cream manufacturers have preferred to use instant coffee for their flavourings and American TV chef Zoe Francois suggests that roast coffee beans, if ground too fine, absorb too much of the cream and give a bitter result.
To produce its new cappuccino ice-cream, manufacturer Dani Slatter wanted a Fairtrade coffee, and selected the house espresso from Best Coffee beans, a company set up to prove that Fairtrade coffee can be a quality product. Their espresso blend is made up of beans from Honduras, Peru, Uganda, Ethiopia and Indonesia, and is certified as organic, Fairtrade, and carries the Rainforest Alliance mark as well.
The result, says Dani Slatter, shows that ‘real’ coffee can be used successfully in an ice-cream dessert.
“The blend of beans needs to be a robust one, with distinctive notes, as subtle flavours can be lost in the creamy mixture of ice cream. We have also found that the addition of a very high-quality vanilla extract helps round off the flavours to give a perfectly smooth cappuccino style.”
Cotswold Ice Cream’s cappuccino is available in 4.5 litre tubs for catering use.
By Ian Boughton