UK consumers are, pardon the pun, going nuts for nut-flavoured ice cream; becoming more and more common in ice cream cabinets up and down the country.

Incorporating pistachio to hazelnut, almonds to peanuts, this newest trend is a funny one, as there are lots of reasons not to use nuts within ice cream recipes. Commonly nuts are more expensive than other flavourings, some even 2-4 times more expensive, and usually goes hand in hand with a higher dosage.

This, paired with the fact that there are serious allergen considerations to contend with, and you may question why anyone would seek to use nut-based recipes. Nuts in particular are a life-threatening allergen to some (around 2 in 100 children and 1 in 200 adults), and the number of people with peanut allergies is growing.

Nevertheless, demand for nutty ice cream is rising, therefore, for the people that can have nuts, nuts they shall have!

Below I’ll take a look through some of the key considerations for incorporating a nutty ice cream recipe into your cabinet.

So, why are nuts so expensive?

Their high price tag is largely down to the way in which nuts are farmed. Many varieties of nuts require the ideal climate for growth; often very hot summers paired with cool winters (without frost or freezing that could destroy the crop).

Furthermore, the farmland on which nuts are grown will quite often need to be relatively bespoke. Take for example Turkey, nuts here are farmed on hillsides that provide the ideal conditions. Clearly, we don’t grow a lot of nuts here in the UK for this reason.

Farming and harvesting these nuts is no mean feat also; with a great deal of hand-work and very little factory process involved, there is obviously a price to match.

But price isn’t just based on how nuts are grown and harvested, supply and demand plays a significant role in their cost.

A perfect example of this can be seen within the hazelnut market, with household names Ferrero (manufacturers of Nutella) using a quarter of the world’s hazelnut supply on an annual basis. Of course, this ultimately leaves a limited supply to other manufacturers; and should a bad harvest occur, every other manufacturer or retailer seeking hazelnuts are left to contend with one another for the remaining supply after Ferrero has claimed its share. And as we have seen with recent ingredient shortages, high demand for products will always lead to increasing costs.

For the ice cream industry, not only are nuts of all varieties expensive per kilo, but you will require a lot of them to ensure you have that perfect nutty flavour. So, how should you incorporate nuts into your ice cream recipes?

When adding nuts, you should ideal be using 70-100g per kilo of white base (around 7-10%). However, the trouble with doing this means you are adding more solids to your recipe (not to mention more fats), which will increase the weight of your gelato or ice cream, pushing down on the product, losing air and ultimately making it harder to scoop. So how can you do it?

Forming a recipe that won’t drive you nuts

The quick and easy way to improve difficulty in scooping is dextrose and salt. By adding 1-3% of dextrose or 0.5% of salt, you will create a much softer product that is much more scoopable.

As I have mentioned previously, Dextrose is a big favourite of mine, as it provides that all-important softness with very little sweetness. However, in nutty recipes, salt is the real crown jewel.

Salt and nuts are a match made in flavour heaven. The addition of salt to nuts lifts the flavour further, making it the perfect ingredient to increase flavour within your ice cream recipe without affecting its softness.

Now we have the flavour and some softness in our recipe, we need to gain back that all-important air within our ice cream or gelato. This can be achieved by rebalancing your typical recipe.

Most ice cream makers when producing a typical recipe will add a paste to an already pasteurised base mix; however, recipes that include nuts will require the paste being added before pasteurisation. Again, the heat of pasteurisation following this will only further bring out the flavour of our nuts.

And what about cream? I tend to remove this from nut-based ice cream recipes, purely because I believe the nut will act as the cream. Reducing the cream content will make the fat from the nuts the dominant fat within the recipe and reduce the solids – win, win!

Following this we would, of course, add in that all-important salt to lift the flavour profile of the nuts, before adjusting our levels of sugars to provide the right level of anti-freeze without too much sweetness.

Cabinet considerations

With your perfectly formulated nutty ice cream ready, now is the time to consider where it should be in your ice cream cabinet. As mentioned in previous articles, the corners of your cabinet will typically be the warmest, so for a nutty ice cream that is typically harder to scoop, this is the ideal position.

When it comes to allergen considerations in your cabinet, of course once you have a nut-based ice cream you have effectively contaminated both the cabinet and your production area. This should be taken into serious consideration when planning your ice cream cabinet and how you communicate your flavours to customers.

Offsetting the costs of a more expensive nutty ice cream should also play a big role when forming your cabinet; ensuring other flavours sway to a less costly approach will guarantee your cabinet is commercially viable.

Are flavour considerations driving you nuts? Please don’t hesitate to get in touch for any advice or guidance on choosing the most cost-effective, consumer friendly recipes for your cabinet.

See you next time for the latest scoop!

Jonny