COOKING WITH TEA - Green tea ice cream

September 15, 2016

Most green tea ice cream is made using matcha, a green tea powder, which means they all end up tasting pretty similar. This recipe lets you experiment with various loose leaf green tea to tease out different flavours. After plenty of (delicious) experimenting, we decided to go all out and use Cup Above Tea Gyokuro. This specialist batch of Japanese green tea was awarded best green tea worldwide at the Golden Leaf Awards and produces an absolutely exceptional flavoured ice cream with a gorgeous vibrant green hue.

cup above tea gyokuro award winning japanese green tea

Tea recipe – green tea ice cream

Preparation – 40 minutes

Cooking – 30 minutes (a little longer if you don’t have an ice cream churner)

Cooking with tea: what you’ll need

300ml pure cream (thin)

4 tablespoons Cup Above Tea Gyokuro green tea leaves

1 cup caster sugar

6 egg yolks

300ml thickened cream

Method

Pour your pure cream, tea leaves and 1/4 of the cup of caster sugar in a saucepan. Stir over a low heat to dissolve the sugar. Don’t let the cream bubble.

Once the sugar has dissolved and tea leaves have started to infuse increase the heat to medium to bring the mix to just below boiling point. If you heat the Gyokuro tea at too high a temperature it will impart a bitter flavour to the ice cream.

Let the cream mixture sit for around 30 minutes or until the colour is a nice deep shade of green.

In a separate bowl, beat four of the egg yolks and the remaining caster sugar with electric beaters, until the mixture is thick and pale. Set aside.

Take your tea mixture and strain into another saucepan to remove the tea leaves and bring to a medium heat. Add the beaten egg mixture and reduce to low heat. Stir constantly until the mixture has the consistency to coat the back of a spoon – usually around 6-7 minutes.

Pour into a large bowl, cover with cling wrap and place in the freezer.

Take your thickened cream and beat using electric beaters until soft peaks form. Take your egg mixture from the freezer and fold in combining with a light hand.

If you have an ice cream machine, use it to churn your mixture and follow your usual process – and you’re done!

If you don’t have a churner, pour your mixture into a shallow tray or container and freeze for two hours. Remove from the freezer, scoop out into a bowl, and beat with electric beaters. Put the mixture back in the shallow tray and repeat this process three more times before finally transferring to a plastic container and freezing until totally firm. We guarantee it will be worth the wait.

Scoop into serving bowls or a waffle cone and serve with some finely grated dark chocolate.

cooking with tea green tea ice cream recipe