freeze dried eggs and dairy Freeze Drying

Freeze dried ice cream – neapolitan

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You know what freeze dried ice cream is? SPACE ICE CREAM!!!!

Yeah, baby, let’s make some space ice cream!!

Freeze dried ice cream is also called astronaut ice cream, but I think space ice cream sounds better 🙂

While we have done ice cream sandwiches before (read about that here), this is our first time doing ice cream, sans sandwich. I do already know what freeze dried ice cream tastes like, so I’m not curious about how it’ll taste or anything. However, I am curious to see how it’ll do at market. I would take a guess, but I’m almost always wrong about how things sell, so I won’t even bother lol.

The ice cream was already pre-frozen, lmao, duh! But I didn’t cut it up in advance or anything. After the initial chamber cooling, which takes 15 minutes, I cut up the Neapolitan ice cream and then one tray at a time, I put it in the Ice Queen (Harvest Right Home Pro Medium freeze dryer).

Blue Ribbon Neapolitan ice cream

Cutting the ice cream – oh, so fun!

For cutting it up, I didn’t want it melting, which is why I waited until the chamber was finished with its initial cooldown to even start cutting it up. I used a big knife for this. I had no idea the best way to do it, so first I tried to cut straight through the carton. My thinking here was that it would then hold it all in place and cutting it smaller from there would be easy. Well, that was a stupid idea and it did not work at all how I was thinking. So for the second carton, I just made a slice down the whole carton and peeled it off. Then I cut the ice cream into strips, and then cut those down more. That worked just fine. I was overthinking it with the first carton, haha.

Two cartons of ice cream filled almost all five trays, but not quite. So I did have a little bit of space left, but enough to warrant opening a whole new carton of ice cream. So I decided to put a little bit of my mint chocolate chip in that space so I can try it. It’s one of my favorite ice creams, and I’ve never had it freeze dried 🙂

mint chocolate chip ice cream on freeze dryer trays
Neapolitan ice cream cut up and on freeze dryer trays

Of course space ice cream rocks!

This freeze dried ice cream is super delicious!! The mint chocolate chip I just added because I had the room for it is actually better than the chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry, I think. Also, just the chunks freeze dried faster than the slices I tried to cut all neatly. Next time, I’ll just put spoonfuls of ice cream on the trays and not try to slice it or anything 🙂

So how long did it take to freeze dry ice cream sandwiches?

From start to finish, freeze drying ice cream took about 20 or so hours. I did stop it around the 17 hour mark and flipped them over

Note on the flipping… don’t use parchment paper! The paper stuck to some pieces that weren’t quite dried all the way through and it was a huge pain! Next time, I will just use the silicone tray liners we have.

The Ice Queen did need a defrost after this batch’s I did the two hour defrost, then emptied the bucket it all drains into.

Happy freeze drying!!

freeze dried ice cream

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