I recently bought ice cream with Irish cream liqueur and chocolate liqueur in it. Is the alcohol in the liqueur still present, or does the freezer eliminate it, like cooking does?
by 
Muireann Killough
ANSWERS: 1
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Would you believe that ice cream is cooked before it's frozen? It's a custard mix which is slowly heated, then cooled, then frozen as it's being stirred. While the flavorings mixed in may or may not be cooked with it, heat would be the primary method of eliminating the alcohol in your liquer-flavored ice cream, and the presence of any significant amount of alcohol could lead to the formation of undesirable ice crystals in your custard, so if there is any alcohol left from your flavoring, I'm sure there's not much. Besides, for safety/liability reasons ice cream makers don't like producing "unpasteurized" (read as 'raw') products. My freinds at Edy's/Dreyers Ice Cream tell me that virtually every component of their frozen ice cream and yogurt products has been cooked to a certain degree for food safety reasons, and this would eliminate most or all of the alcohol in such a product.
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