Green Tea and Red Bean Ice Creams

[achevres]

DOC WILSON'S FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVORS has a lot of recipes for traditional and "different" ice cream flavors. Most of them use a mix of sweetened-condensed milk plus half and half and heavy whipping cream. There are several tea-flavored ice creams to give you an idea of the process.

I can personally vouch for the "Lemon Sisters Vanilla." It was fantastic.

[andiesenji]

And how might one make ice cream that tastes like a Vietnamese iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk? That prospect (if it's feasible) is enough to make me buy an ice cream maker.

Actually this does very well as a granita without using an ice cream maker at all. It just takes time and a strong wrist to scrape and stir the ice crystals every half hour until you get the consistency you want (tasting of course as you go).

I have found that the new "disposable" Glad ware "family size" containers are just perfect for this. I also found what looks like an ice cream scoop but has teeth on the end at one of the Kitchen & More outlets which does a bang-up job of scraping and mixing the granita as it freezes.

Of course I do have two ice cream freezers - the self-contained ones with a built-in freezing system and they work beautifully for ice cream, frozen yogurt, and etc., but some things just seem better the old-fashioned way.

If anyone cares, the Lello Gelato Junior is now available at Amazon for $199.00 and shipping is free.

I have had one of these since last summer and while it makes a smaller batch than my old Simac, it does a very nice job. And the price is right.

I am not pushing these because I have anything to do with the company, but once you find how easy it is to have this ready to go anytime, you will find all kinds of things to do with it.

And in addition to ice cream.

I had a couple of chilled soups to do and I chilled them in this and it only took about 10-15 minutes for each. Considering how much time they would have to chill in the refrigerator, this was a great time saver.

[FoodZealot]

Great minds think alike! I made this last year, and it was delicious. I used a recipe that called for condensed milk as a template. I brewed the tea from prebagged a Thai tea blend, and it tasted great, but some of the spice came through the bag, and it interupted the texture of the ice cream. I suggest being extra careful about straining and/or taking only the tea w/o any of the grit.

[ludja]

There used to be a place in San Francisco called Pure T. It was a tea shop/ice cream parlor. There were only tea ice creams and sorbets. The Thai tea ice cream was very good. I loved the Earl Grey milk shakes.

From what I can remember, here are some of the flavors ......

Morrocan mint

earl grey

thai tea

Chai

Black Currant

A while back I made Thai tea ice cream and I steeped the tea in the milk cream mixture. It came out pretty good.

I reallly liked that place (on Polk) and was sad one day to see it was no longer there. I tasted a bunch of their different tea ice creams in particular and they were all very good. So I'm sure the Thai iced tea would be very good.

I wonder if using a tea syrup as Rachel suggests and also steeping the tea in the milk or cream would help to boost to the flavor...

Peet's Coffee used to have these great summertime tea smoothies as well; I think they had green tea and also jasmine.

Anyway--I've been meaning to experiment with different tea ice creams--maybe this thread will get me off my butt (of course that doesn't solve the problem of my overstuffed freezer right now--no room for the Donvier... )

[avocado]

I have a shortcut recipe for cookie and cream ice cream (courtesy of Paula Deen) that involves beating condensed milk and egg yolks, adding whipped heavy cream and crumbled cookies, and freezing without an ice cream maker.

It's really quite tasy.

I'm hosting an Asian-themed dinner and I'm wondering if I could use the same method for green tea ice cream, adding matcha powder for flavoring. My only concern is that somehow the cookie chunks uphold the texture of the ice cream and it would be too rich and fatty if it was smooth, no chunks.

On that note, what do you think I could add for chunks? Ginger cookies? Throw some ideas at me.

Edited August 10, 2005 by avocado (log)

[vinelady]

What about adding some fruit chunks?

[avocado]

What about adding some fruit chunks?

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A good idea in theory, but I hate fruit chunks in my ice cream. That's probably why I didn't even think of it. Should have mentioned that, sorry.

[origamicrane]

yeah just remeber to mix the matcha powder with some milk beforehand

then whisk it into the cream.

Adding chunks to green tea ice cream?

the problem will be that the green tea flavour is quite delicate.

Anything you do add might drown the green tea.

maybe something like nuts? pistachio would be interesting or something with texture marshmellows? or you could go for a green tea tiramisu ice cream?

get some lady fingers and some marsala wine?

[Episure]

Practically anything will overpower green tea in the ice cream unless it is used tiny quantities. You could try candied ginger bits or raisins stewed with star anise which is then removed. That's what I use in my green tea kulfi.

[phlawless]

you could use black tea instead, then have more options...candied ginger, lemon, or orange for example.

[godito]

If you really want to take the time, making ice cream requires no ice cream machine, just some time. What the ice cream machine does for you is, while cooling down the mixture, stirs it, thus breaking the ice cristals that start to form. You can do the exact same thing, only you have to take the mixture out of the freezer and stir it often. I've done raspberry ice cream this way before... nothing chuncky, just pureed raspberries. Didn't turn as creamy as machine made, but that's because I neglected the mixture for too long at times. It was still very good.

[anzu]

Are you sure you actually need chunks of anything?

As far as richness and fattiness goes, might not the bitterness of the matcha offset this adequately?

And for texture, I recall reading a vaguely similar sounding icecream in one of Nigella Lawson's books, also no stirring, no beating, but with citrus juice providing the counterpoint to the sweetness of the cream (don't have the book, so I'm very vague here), and I don't recall there being chunks of anything required to get the right texture in the icecream.

[juuceman]

I have a shortcut recipe for cookie and cream ice cream (courtesy of Paula Deen) that involves beating condensed milk and egg yolks, adding whipped heavy cream and crumbled cookies, and freezing without an ice cream maker.

It's really quite tasy.

I'm hosting an Asian-themed dinner and I'm wondering if I could use the same method for green tea ice cream, adding matcha powder for flavoring. My only concern is that somehow the cookie chunks uphold the texture of the ice cream and it would be too rich and fatty if it was smooth, no chunks.

On that note, what do you think I could add for chunks? Ginger cookies? Throw some ideas at me.

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Ciao Bella makes a green tea with white chocolate chunk ice cream that makes even me, a devoted anti-white 'chocolate' folk, lick my lips thinking about it..

[JasonTrue]

I don't think the cookies would interfere too much if they are a simple flavor. Some flavors are fairly compatible with matcha, including sweetened red beans, almond, pine nut, macadamia, etc. I doubt that the cookies contribute to the creaminess in any way; they must be primarily for textural contrast. Based on Paula Deen's "more is better" cooking philosophy, I would bet that the cookies aren't at all necessary.

Based on your description, she's not using any milk... if that's the case it might be a lot like a molded frozen parfait. This is what I got the first time I made a chocolate ice cream using melted bitter chocolate, even though I did use an ice cream maker... it was wonderful, but easier to slice than to scoop

If there is no milk in there, that will definitely be very creamy, but again, in modest portions it might not be overwhelming.

I'm not sure what the freezing technique in your recipe uses, but if you do regular 20-30 minute intervals of pulling your ice cream mix out of the freezer and stirring, you can get adequate results. I always find that the crystallization is a little uneven, and it always takes more time than I'd like.

You could probably do the double-ziplock back method which is usually kind of a party game: 1 cup of ice cream in a small ziplock back, placed in a large 1- or 2- quart ziplock bag full of ice and course salt, then massaged until ice cream-like.

My matcha ice cream recipe, only tested with an ice cream maker:

http://blog.jagaimo.com/archive/2005/06/12/695.aspx

[JasonTrue]

I just had some fortune cookies dipped in matcha-flavored white chocolate made by Chocolati for me... white chocolate and matcha were meant for each other.

[Katie Nell]

I just had some fortune cookies dipped in matcha-flavored white chocolate made by Chocolati for me... white chocolate and matcha were meant for each other.

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What is matcha? Maybe that's a clueless question, but what can I say... I'm clueless!

Where's my Food Lover's Companion when I need it?!?

[jayt90]

I have a shortcut recipe for cookie and cream ice cream (courtesy of Paula Deen) that involves beating condensed milk and egg yolks, adding whipped heavy cream and crumbled cookies, and freezing without an ice cream maker.

It's really quite tasy.

I'm hosting an Asian-themed dinner and I'm wondering if I could use the same method for green tea ice cream, adding matcha powder for flavoring. My only concern is that somehow the cookie chunks uphold the texture of the ice cream and it would be too rich and fatty if it was smooth, no chunks.

On that note, what do you think I could add for chunks? Ginger cookies? Throw some ideas at me.

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I've been wondering what on earth is matcha, too. It sounds like it might be starchy.

In any case the recipe mentioned by avocado works well, and is easy, because there are very few watery ingredients to crystallise. No milk, no egg whites, no light cream, no concentrated green tea. If you can keep watery ingredients out of your green tea adaptation, the method should work well.

[avocado]

Matcha is green tea powder.

[anzu]

Matcha is Japanese powdered green tea - this is the tea that is used in the tea ceremony.

When used as a drink, it is frothy, bright green, and has a markedly bitter taste which some like and some dislike. (I'm one who likes it).

There is a four page long thread on matcha here in the Japan forum.

Apart from the tea ceremony, it is also used to flavor icecream, cakes, mousse, and a whole lot of other things. Look for either matcha or green tea as a keyword in the Japan forum, and you'll find a lot of individual threads concerning these.

Changing topic back to this icecream recipe. Some people have suggested various ways of beating or stirring the icecream in the absence of an icecream maker.

I was instead under the impression that the recipe itself makes this beating or stirring unnecessary.

This kind of thing was my mother's specialty. Icecream with no churning involved, cakes where all the ingredients could be thrown together, puddings where, even though the ingredients could be thrown together, you still ended up with two distinct layers of pudding and sauce after baking...

Even if you like spending time in the kitchen, it's still a great way to do things sometimes!