My fiancée Ariella is a supreme baker and ice cream maker. Before we met, my freezer only knew ice cream brands like Haagen Dagz and Ben & Jerry’s. However now that I’ve been spoiled by her incredible ice creams like vanilla bean, rocky road, toffee swirl caramel, and saffron rose with crushed candied pistachios, the best name brands in the industry have become embarrassingly mediocre. A few months ago when we were sampling The Tea Spot’s Meditative Mind, Ariella lit up and exclaimed, “This would make a great ice cream.” No few words could have made me more excited, blending two of my favourite things into one. Waiting for her to perfect the recipe, however, was painful. A few weeks ago, her hard work and my patience paid off as she created the best ice cream I have ever eaten. Culinary genius!
Check out her recipe below:
It’s true, I love to bake. Often when I’m feeling a little stressed, I find myself dreaming up interesting ingredient combinations and new recipes to try. So the seed for this recipe was planted months ago, when I started to think about how I could merge my loves for baking and tea and bake delicious treats that could feature our Tea Sparrow picks and exhibit the subtle flavours, the perfectly balanced blends, the quality of the ingredients of the loose leaf teas we were falling in love with.
Cookies seemed like an easy enough place to start – there are countless innovative variations on baking blogs of earl grey shortbread, lavender cookies, black tea biscuits. Which made the project more doable …and also slightly less exciting. I wanted something new; something unique.
And I have to say, this ice cream is nothing less than unique. The way the jasmine and rosebuds pair, balanced by the subtlety of the white tea, all held by the thick, rich, cold creamy base, is enough to keep you entertained when the crickets stop chirping.
Plus, lets face it: it’s summer. Even I’ve tapered my baking off to a bare minimum that allows me to make the most out of fresh summer fruit with pies, popsicles and ice creams. Yum.
I decided to use David Leibowitz’s vanilla bean ice cream recipe we all fell in love with when I made it for Michael’s birthday last year. I used the tea the same way he uses the vanilla bean, placing the leaves directly in the milk and boiling them, then leaving the leaves to infuse overnight before straining them out of the finished ice cream and freezing it in my ice cream machine.
If you are an ice cream junkie like my Michael and you love tea like we do, you will be licking your bowl clean as you enjoy the last hot days of summer with this tasty treat.
Here’s the recipe:
Meditative Mind Rose Ice Cream
About 1 quart (1l)
Adapted from The Perfect Scoop (Ten Speed Press)
- 1 cup (250ml) whole milk
- A pinch of salt
- ¾ cup (150g) sugar
- 4 tbsp loose-leaf Meditative Mind tea
- 2 cups (500ml) heavy (whipping) cream
- 5 large egg yolks
1. Heat the milk, salt, and sugar in a saucepan. Place tea leaves into the milk. Cover, remove from heat, and infuse for one hour.
2. To make the ice cream, set up an ice bath by placing a 2-quart (2l) bowl in a larger bowl partially filled with ice and water. Set a strainer over the top of the smaller bowl and pour the cream into the bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, stir together the egg yolks. Rewarm the milk then gradually pour some of the milk into the yolks, whisking constantly as you pour. Scrape the warmed yolks and milk back into the saucepan.
4. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom with a heat-resistant spatula, until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula. (This is a very fleeting moment. Watch carefully to make sure you don’t make scrambled eggs!)
5. Strain the custard into the heavy cream. Stir over the ice until cool, then refrigerate to chill thoroughly. Preferably overnight.
6. Strain out the tea leaves and freeze the custard in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Enjoy!
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2009/02/vanilla-ice-cream/
