How To Preserve Avocado Ice Cream's Vibrant Color
Nowadays, ice cream flavors go beyond familiar varieties like chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. Vegetables like spinach, carrots, charred corn, and green fennels are being combined with nuts and sweet ingredients to make intriguing ice cream blends, per Food Network. Even certain cheese products have provided a boost of creaminess to ice cream, with mascarpone, goat cheese, and burrata as a few beloved flavor staples, via Bon Appétit.
Now, if you're the type of person who enjoys the taste of nostalgia with fruity ice creams but with a more creative, modern twist, we've got a recommendation: avocado ice cream (and just to clarify, avocados are fruits, according to Harvard Medical School). This type of ice cream is a combination of avocados that have been puréed, as well as milk, cream, sweetened condensed milk, and some lemon/lime juice, via MasterClass. The taste is likely how you imagine it to be: Mild and reminiscent of avocados, as mentioned by Well Plated.
But since cut avocados have a tendency to turn brown, this may translate to an unpleasant hue within the avocado ice cream. Fortunately, MasterClass has a tip for preserving the ice cream's vibrant green color.
Acidity is used for a reason
As previously mentioned, the addition of lemon and/or lime juice is key when making avocado ice cream, but it's not just for a boost of brightness or flavor. It may actually help to keep oxidation at bay, as told by MasterClass.
So why do avocados turn brown in the first place? Well, as Compound Chem explains, avocados have phenolic compounds, as well as an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase. When polyphenol oxidase is introduced to oxygen, it transforms those phenolic compounds into quinones. These start to polymerize, and, as a result, browning occurs.
There are a few remedies for this, though one of the more popular ones is via the addition of lemon juice, as Compound Chem continues. It's not going to stop browning in its tracks, but it may help slow it down because the enzymes in avocados work slower when the acidic compound is around.
For avocado ice cream, all you need is one tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, via MasterClass. This should be added to the avocados, milk, cream, etc., in the first step. Then, proceed as normal through the ice cream recipe.
Avocado ice cream is easy to make and tasty to boot. But don't skip the lemon/lime juice step if you want your ice cream vibrantly green and aesthetically pleasing to eat.