Sugar in frozen desserts

Sugar in frozen desserts does more than sweeten: it lowers the freezing point of the mix, which keeps the dessert softer and easier to scoop.

Sugar in frozen desserts: A softly set scoop of strawberry ice cream with a smooth glossy surface, slightly yielding at the edges
  • Food science and baking chemistry

Also called: anti-freezing power

In a frozen dessert, dissolved sugars are not just flavor. University research on ice cream notes that the freezing point of a mix is directly proportional to the number of particles in solution, so more dissolved sugar and other solids lowers the freezing point. A lower freezing point means less of the water turns to ice at a given freezer temperature, and the dessert stays softer.

That is why the amount and kind of sugar matter. A Virginia Tech study found that depressing the freezing point could improve how easily ice cream could be dipped, and mixes with more dissolved solids tested significantly softer than the control.

Too little sugar makes a hard, icy dessert. Bakers sometimes call this effect anti-freezing power, and they adjust it by blending sugars, such as sucrose with corn syrup, to get the scoop they want.

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Sources

Written by VanillaGoods in our own words from these sources. Last reviewed October 15, 2026.

  1. Lactose hydrolysis in ice cream mix and effects on freezing point and firmness, Virginia Tech (Transactions of the ASAE)