Freezing Blends



Props to Artist Reed Black

If there are any seasoned blenders out there reading this blog, i picture them sitting with their coffee and scone and having a good "guffaw" over my newbie experiences and blunders. That's cool. I bet those scones are yummy!

The other day i made four blends. Froze three. Later, took one out and put it in the fridge to thaw. Well, it didn't do that. It was pretty much still a rock after 12+ hrs when i needed it soft to syringe for the next day.

I did something i won't do again. I broke it up into chunks and put it back in the blender. My thought was that the blades of the blender would help 'warm' it up, as well as, obviously, blend it back to smooth.

While it DID mostly do that, it also did something weird, which others' might have foreseen happening but i didn't. It 'chunked' up some fatty sections. It made this smeery goopy mess on the sides of the container. It was like a part frozen, part pasty mess of oil. Just gross, and really almost impossible to get blended BACK into the blend that was smooth and creamy and beautiful before it was frozen.

I've read that blends can change their viscosity and such upon freezing. Certain foods don't freeze well, and then to mix them with other foods... could get ugly.

[Lemme clarify here that i put all my blends in a large Ziploc freezer bag. The idea is to freeze them flat - - except they MOVE after they get in the freezer and end up in lumps and crinkled jumbles, but whatevs...]

So today when i needed a blend, frozen like a rock, right outta the freezer (cuz clearly putting it in the fridge to thaw ain't workin'), i filled the sink with hot water and laid it in there. Changed the water about three times, all while helping and kneading the bag. I was doing other stuff too. Within i'd say 15 min, the blend was right back to how it went in originally, and i cut a little hole in the corner of the bag and squeegeed it into a bowl to syringe. Worked great. No weird consistency issues, or oily lumps... looked great.

So i'm getting there. I'm guessing within a month, i'll have this down to a pat. The other day, when i made said mentioned 4 blends, i made them all in an hour. That's way faster than the first few blends. :-)