flowery vanilla green tea ice cream

During a visit a while back, my friend Helen brought over a tin of Mariage Freres "des Impressionistes" flowery vanilla green tea, and now it is one of our favorites!  The tea is light and has a slightly floral flavor to it, with the added warmth of vanilla.  It almost tastes sweet by itself.

Recently we had my friend Diana and her husband and kids over for dinner, and upon serving this tea after dinner, everyone agreed that it would make a fabulous ice cream as well!  So a couple of weeks later when they came to visit again, I set out to turn this delicious tea into an ice cream the night before.

I've used various teas to flavor ice cream before, such as earl grey ice cream and jasmine tea ice cream, so I followed the same concept (based on a combination of Gourmantine's jasmine ice cream recipe and David Lebovitz's green tea ice cream recipe from his book "The Perfect Scoop").

I added the loose leaf tea to hot milk and cream, and let it steep for about an hour.  Then I strained it, and pressed on the steeped leaves to get the maximum flavor out of them.  After discarding the used leaves, I poured the mixture back into the pot and let it warm on the stove.  Then I whisked egg yolks with sugar, tempered the egg yolk mixture with the warm milk/cream mixture, and then poured everything back into the pot.  Once the pot was back on the stove, I cooked it over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickened into a custard.

I let the mixture cool to room temperature, and then let it chill the fridge for a few hours before churning it in my ice cream maker.  After it churned for 25-30 minutes it was ready, and I poured the soft ice cream into a container and let it set overnight in the freezer.

The next day, I found fresh rhubarb at the market, so I decided to make a rhubarb tart to go with the ice cream.  The combination of flavors ended up being the perfect marriage of crispy crust, tart rhubarb, and creamy floral ice cream!

I didn't take any pictures of the tart and ice cream with my camera that night, but I did take pictures with my phone, so my Instagram pictures will have to do!

Incidentally, this led to a slight obsession with rhubarb in the coming weeks, which turned into an addiction of making rhubarb tarts!  Stay tuned!

earl grey ice cream

Last week I made jasmine tea ice cream, and I liked it so much that I wanted to try it with earl grey tea also.  I know it doesn't look very different from the jasmine ice cream, but I decided to post about it anyway (especially since I just bought these adorable little serving bowls from Anthropologie, and I wanted to use them for the pictures!)

I didn't have any loose leaf earl grey, so I used 5 tea bags instead.  Other than that, I followed all the same steps for infusing the tea and making the custard base.  However, when I was straining the tea from the custard, I pressed a bit too hard with the spatula and ended up breaking a few of the tea bags.  So I ended up with tiny specks of tea leaves in my custard, which were too small to strain out.

But it turned out fine - the specks were too small to really notice, plus it added a nice speckled look to the ice cream!

jasmine tea ice cream

I love the floral note in jasmine tea, so when I saw Gourmantine's post on jasmine ice cream, I wanted to try making it!  I love David Lebovitz's green tea ice cream recipe though (from his book "The Perfect Scoop") - it has just the right amount of sweetness and creaminess - so I decided to do a combination of the two recipes.

I infused cream and milk with loose-leaf jasmine tea, strained it, and then tempered egg yolks with the warm liquid.  Then I put it back on the stove and cooked it over medium heat, until the mixture thickened into a custard.  I could have eaten the custard as-is at this point, perhaps poured over pound cake or fresh fruit, but fortunately I was able to resist, and instead let the mixture cool in the fridge.

A few hours later, the custard had thickened even more, and was now ready for the ice cream machine.  I let it churn for 25 minutes, and then put the soft ice cream in the freezer to let it set for the night.  When I tasted it the next morning (yes, I had ice cream for breakfast), I was blown away by the flavor of the jasmine, and the creaminess of the texture.  I think I might like this even better than green tea ice cream!

This ice cream was velvety smooth, unlike my green tea ice cream which had a slight grittiness to it (I had thought it might have been from the brand of green tea powder I used, which is added directly to the custard instead of steeping it with tea leaves.  I guess this proves my theory to be correct!).  In any case, I think I'll try this infusion method for earl grey ice cream too!

green tea ice cream

My mom is always telling me to drink green tea for the antioxidants and health benefits.  But given the choice, I always choose coffee.  Sorry mom!  I will however, eat green tea ice cream.  I can eat lots and lots of it!

I've tried a few different recipes for green tea ice cream, but my favorite is (surprise, surprise)  David Lebovitz's recipe from his book "The Perfect Scoop".  This ice cream is creamy and refreshing all at the same time, with just the perfect amount of green tea flavor.

The only thing I haven't been able to figure out is the ever-so-slight grittiness from the green tea powder, but perhaps that just means that I need to buy a higher quality green tea powder?  In any case, I'll continue making this ice cream over and over again, because really, who doesn't love green tea ice cream?