Ice Cream is a sweet creamy frozen food made primarily with milk products, sweetener, and flavoring. Ice cream is a nutritious food, rich in protein, carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins. Ice cream may be made at home by freezing a mixture of such ingredients as cream, sugar, and flavoring in a small hand-cranked or motor-driven freezer.

Other Frozen Desserts similar to ice cream:

• Ice milk - popularly known as low-fat ice cream contains less than 10% milk fat and more nonfat milk solids than ice cream. Ice milk cost less than ice cream.
• Frozen dairy desserts - is prepared by freezing with or without agitation, it contains pasteurized mix which may contain milk fat and / or vegetable oils, protein, carbohydrates, flavoring, stabilizers, emulsifiers, vitamins and minerals.
• French ice cream and frozen custard - contain relatively large amounts of egg yolk solids.

• Gelato or Italian ice cream - the ingredients of gelato is prepared by freezing while stirring to break ice crystals while they form. It contains more butterfat than ice cream and it has less than 35% air. Gelato is a dense and very flavorful product.
• Sherbet contains much smaller quantities of butterfat and nonfat milk solids than ice cream does, but has more sugar. It has a tart fruit flavoring.
• Sorbet is similar in taste to sherbet but is made without milk products; it is a mixture of sugar, water, and fruit.
• Frozen yogurt is done by freezing while stirring a product resulting from the fermentation by specific lactic acid producing bacteria of a pasteurized or ultra pasteurized mixture of milk and other ingredients. Contains less milk fat than ice cream but it contains the same amount of calcium and protein.

Stabilizers and Emulsifiers are substances that prevent large ice crystals from forming during freezing and improve the whipping quality and texture of the mixture.

How to make commercial ice cream:

• Milk products (such as cream, milk, condensed milk, and nonfat dry milk solids) and sugar or syrup are thoroughly mixed in a large container along with stabilizers and emulsifiers.
• The mixture is then pasteurized, rapidly cooled, and then homogenized to break the cream into tiny bits. The mix is then cooled again and is placed in refrigerated container to age for three or four hours.
• Flavorings and coloring are added to the mixture, which then passes into the freezing chamber, the mix is whipped to add air to the mixture and increase its volume and partially frozen after whipping, nuts and fruit are sometimes added.
• The whipped semi-frozen ice cream is poured into containers that are transported to a room where the ice cream hardens.