Modest Monday – Ice Cream Bases

The ultimate cream vape. Whether you prefer your ice cream mellow and light or rich and decadent, there's sure to be an ice cream vape out there you love. It is worth noting though, if you are trying to avoid D/A/AP, you are going to have a hard time creating a satisfying ice cream vape.

First things first, you have to decide what you ice cream flavor of choice will be.

BASE

 TFA Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

The ultimate ice cream flavor. Buttery, creamy, rich, and packed full of vanilla. This goes especially well in bakery type ice creams where the aforementioned flavor profiles can really help other components of the ice cream shine. However, will delicate balancing, it also goes very well in fruity ice creams. The TFA VBIC does have a tendency to mute the fruit flavors. If you want an ice cream flavor that works with fruit better or you get that dreaded pepper flavor, you have one other main option. Use around 1-4%

CAP Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

Skewed more towards a cream profile, still packed full of vanilla, but only a slight buttery richness. It tends to pair with fruit a lot better making it easier to work with for people who haven't figured out the intricacies of TFA VBIC. While this isn't my personal favorite, it's still a wonderful ice cream flavor that can be utilized to great effectiveness. Most importantly though, I've never seen a report of that pepper flavor people often get with TFA VBIC. It's a great substitute at around a 1:1 ratio. Use around 1-3%.

SUPPLEMENTS

HS Ice Cream/French Vanilla Ice Cream

For when you really want to kick up that ice cream profile up a notch to give it that home-spun, super rich and creamy profile. Almost as if the ice cream is slightly over-churned in a magical sort of way that makes is buttery and tangy. Use it at low very percentages, 0.25-1%

FA Meringue

Sweeten up your ice cream! Generally a powdered sugar type of flavor, but it works especially well with ice cream to just give it a bit of a natural creamy sweetness. Use it around 0.5-1%.

TFA Marshmallow

Great for fluffing up an ice cream when you don't want it so heavy. Packed with ethyl maltol, it flattens out the profile, soften fruits, and adds an innate sweetness to fruit ice creams. Best used around 1-2%.

FA Vienna Cream

Great for when you want to transform your ice cream into an ice cream milkshake. It adds a milky smooth texture and a sweetened condensed milk flavor. If you use this flavor, it must steep for at least a week! This flavor gives off an overbearing malty flavor until it's properly steeped. Used best around 1-2%, but don't use over 3%.

MOVING FORWARD

With the same general disclaimer, this is not the all encompassing list of ice cream flavors and supplemental flavors. There are a wide array ice cream flavor bases, ranging from great to meh. In my personal opinion, these are simply the best and most quintessential.

How you build you base depends on what kind of recipe you are trying to make. There is an endless list of ice cream flavors you can replicate. Pick your favorite Ben and Jerry's and go from there.

TEST RECIPE

For our test recipe today, I will analyze my Blackberry Ice Cream.

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As I mentioned earlier, CAP Vanilla Bean Ice Cream works great in fruit vapes, I specifically chose TFA's version of this flavor due to the Blackberry's overpowering tendencies. This trait makes TFA Vanilla Bean Ice Cream a natural choice since it does have a tendency to punish overbearing fruit flavors and it will add that richness to the vape that compliments the bitterness of blackberry brings.

HS French Vanilla Ice Cream was chosen to further enhance the richness of this overall vape. As I mentioned, blackberry is very assertive. This gives you the option to make this fruity ice cream vape a lot more rich than you normally would, while still keeping it balanced.

Rather than use TFA Marshmallow or FA Meringue to sweeten up this recipe, I went with TFA Strawberry Ripe to help round out this recipe. A great fruit supplemental flavor also loaded with ethyl maltol to sweeten and soften the overall profile of the recipe. It's not that one, or both, of the other prescribed supplemental flavors couldn't be used, but this just fit with the profile of the recipe better. It will take time, patience, and trial and error to ultimately find out how to best fine tune your recipe.

Conclusion

Whether you prefer your ice creams fruity and light, or rich and heavy, there are concentrates out there to help you achieve your goal. It won't come without a lot of trial and error given the high number of ice cream concentrates and the nearly endless number of way to supplement them. One of the best approaches you can take to perfecting your ice cream recipes is do your single flavor tests, analyze other people's successful recipes, and don't be afraid to mess up a lot of batches trying something new.