Recipe for the Best Soft Serve Ice Cream

Soft-serve ice cream is made using a Soft-Serve Ice Cream machine and involves carefully preparing and freezing high-quality blends to achieve its characteristic smooth and creamy texture.

Soft Serve Mix Recipe: To serve the creamiest and tasty soft serve mix to your customers, mix any of our high-quality blends with water, milk (adds 13% more solids to the cream), or non-dairy milk, then add one of our concentrated flavors to create the perfect cream for your soft-serve ice cream. 

Soft Serve Mix - Dairy

Premium Dairy Soft Serve mixes have 11% Fat while regular and No Added Sugar mix have less than 3% Fat. 

Soft Serve Mix - Vegan

Vegan Soft Serve Mixes are blended with premium natural ingredients, the basic vegan mix has to be mixes with any non dairy milk to add the required protein, while the Coconut and Sorbet can be mixed with water.
Concentrated Flavoring: AussieBlends offers a wide range of concentrated flavors grouped by type for easy finding. Also, we created a list of flavoring for Coconut Soft Serve Mix and flavoring for Sorbet Soft Serve mix, this can help you choose the right flavoring for your soft serve.

Concentrated Flavoring for Soft Serve

Mixing and Homogenization: AussieBlends Soft Serve Mix is a powder mix. To prepare the cream, add clean, purified cold water (you can also use milk, or non-dairy milk for the vegan option), according to the product mixing instructions in a clean plastic bucket, add one bag of AussieBlends Soft Serve Mix, whisk for 30 to 40 seconds, add the concentrated flavoring to your cream and whisk for another 15 seconds, then hold the mix in the refrigerator. After 10 minutes, whisk again to homogenize the cream. Keep the cream refrigerated all the time in the refrigerator or the soft-serve machine refrigerated hopper
Freezing and Aeration (overrun): Pour the chilled mix into the hopper of the soft-serve ice cream machine. The machine's components include a freezing chamber and a beater. Air is incorporated into the cream when the beater churn and pumped the cream simultaneously. This aeration gives the soft-serve a light and fluffy texture (overrun).
Rapid Freezing: When dispensing the soft-serve it's exposed to temperatures well below freezing. The rapid freezing prevents large ice crystals from forming, resulting in a smoother texture.
Immediate Enjoyment: Soft-serve ice cream is best enjoyed right after being dispensed. Combining the creamy interior and the perfect crispy, tasty waffle ice cream cone creates a delightful contrast in texture and temperature.
Toppings and Garnishes: Enhance the soft-serve with various toppings, such as syrups, sprinkles, nuts, fruit, or candies, based on individual preferences.
Cleaning and Maintenance: - After serving, the soft serve machine needs to be properly cleaned and maintained to ensure food safety and consistent performance. The key elements of the soft serve ice cream-making process are the controlled freezing, incorporation of air, and continuous dispensing that result in this beloved frozen treat's signature smooth, light, and creamy texture.
Profitability: Soft serve is one of the most profitable, offer in the fast-food market; also, complies to all of the following criteria:
  • Low Cost Per Serve, High Mark-Up (As an example of how profitable soft serve cones are, a Cone size 75 ml. with Overrun 60% has a 248% profitability)
  • Fast Serving Time (Less than 10 seconds)
  • Operationally Easy to Handle (Powder soft serve is easy and fast to mix with cold water and flavor)
  • Versatile Menu with a wide price-range. Soft Serve is usually sold as Cones (20-30%), Sundaes (10-20%) or used as a base for making Milkshakes (60 - 70%). However, this depends on the market and type of store.
  • Can be used as an up-sell. (”Get dessert for only a small amount of money extra!”, or “Would you like dessert with that?”)
  • Can be sold as a treat, dessert, food item or beverage!
  • It is a very ‘Marketable’ and Affordable Product
  • Customers are already familiar with the product - and there is no resistance to trying it
  • The pay-back on the equipment investment is fast.
AussieBlends® leads in the Soft Serve mix by developing high quality blends and flavors for the ice cream industry.

How to Prepare AussieBlends Ice Cream, Soft Serve, and Frozen Yogurt Mix

1. Pour 3.0 to 3.5 liters of cold, clean drinking water or Dairy-Free Milk (Oat, Almond, Soy, etc.) for the Vegan Mix into a food-grade mixing bucket or other mixing container suitable for preparing food.
2. Open a bag of AussieBlends. Mix powder with the water or Dairy-Free and pour into the water while mixing with a wire whisk.
3. Keep mixing for about 30 seconds or until all the powder has dissolved to have a cream.
4. Add the Flavor to the cream as desired.
5. Allow to stand for 10 minutes at 5⁰C (41⁰F), and then whisk vigorously before putting into liquid nitrogen application to allow perfect emulsification.
6. Add the product to the machine or refrigerate the cream while using it.

Soft Serve Machine

​Soft serve machines typically come with two hoppers and a twist in the middle to dispense two individual flavors and the option to twist them together. Soft Serve machines are divided by dispensing system and cooling system.
There are two types of cream dispensing: a gravity feed and a pump feed. Gravity machines usually reach an overrun between 20% and 50%, while pump machines can easily reach up to 60% overrun.
There are two types of cooling systems: the air-cooled system requires space on both sides of the machine. In contrast, water-cooled machines require water installation inside the store.

Soft Serve Overrun

  • Overrun is the percentage of air incorporated into the ice cream when the cream is frozen by the Soft Serve Ice Cream Machine. 
  • The overrun expands the volume of the ice cream, making it soft and with a nice texture.
  • The overrun is calculated by the weight difference in the same volume percentage before (cream form) and after (ice cream form).​
  • Depending on your soft serve machine you can get overruns from 30% of air (gravity machines) up to 60% of air (pump machines).

The McDonalds Model

The of selling Soft Serve profitably. The McDonald's Franchise has been hugely successful by employing both the above secrets for years. Instead of trying to re-invent the wheel, why not learn from them:
  1. How can you add value to something that costs very little and sell it with vast mark-ups in various exciting ways?
    1. They advertise the cheap cone on billboards, banners, and large posters OUTSIDE their stores, but usually not inside.
    2. Inside the store, they show you a menu with sundaes, floats, or other deliciously decorated cones, which in most cases changes your mind and the amount of money you spend. 
    3. These other menu offerings usually don't cost McDonald's much more to produce, but they charge four times as much.
    4. You can offer much more exciting menu options, change faster, offer flavored soft serve and be more delicious and exciting than they are.
    5. The McDonalds soft serve is price-based. You're in a position to offer a better quality soft serve in more flavors and colors in more ways than they can. Use these advantages to your benefit.
  2. How can you use soft serve to draw customers into your business to buy other more profitable frozen treats, food, and beverage items?
    1. McDonald's advertise their low price cup cone - drawing in the crowds. However, customers buy soft serve and other things as well, which create 'Intangible benefits' because you can't put a dollar figure on it.
    2. Their low price cone also has another benefit - the public perceives the FRANCHISE as good value for money, which delivers lasting benefits for the franchise.