Saturday, February 27, 2010

Milky Tea Earl Grey Ice Cream!





Doo doo doo... Saturday morning... la la la... husband's already up early, working on a project... I rolllll out of bed... think about going for a run... haven't put contacts in yet so a little blind.

Hmm. Ice cream. 830am.

Okay!!!

Yes, I started making this ice cream in my pyjamas. It's a little bit time-consuming but worth it, like most things, don't you agree? I just love milky tea flavoured things. Tea things in general. Bubble tea? Love it. Tea flavoured cakes? Love. I start every morning off with a heavily-steeped bag of tea with soymilk. Perfect. Pumps me up. Today felt like the right morning to make Earl Grey Ice Cream... I call it Milky Tea Earl Grey...

This is a modified version of the Black Currant tea ice cream from The Perfect Scoop...! My beef with the recipes in The Perf Scoop is that they are just a little too sweet for me, and also too eggy... so I decided to experiment with the proportions to see what would happen. Turns out... DELICIOUS DELIGHTS happen!!! Perf Scoop calls for 5 egg yolks and 3/4 cup sugar. I used much less... see below!

{ Milky Tea Earl Grey Ice Cream! }

You will need:


3 cups 10% fat milk (called Half & Half in Canada)
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
2 egg yolks
10 earl grey tea bags (I used "Twinings" brand)
Ice cream maker. I have a Cuisinart silver box-type one. I forget the model name...

1. In a medium saucepan, heat 2 cups of the milk with the sugar and the 10 tea bags on medium heat, until low boil. Once lightly boiling (6-8 minutes or so... keep an eye on it!), remove from heat, stir it up and let sit and cool for 30 minutes.

2. Whisk egg yolks in medium bowl.

3. Check on milky tea mixture: squeeeeeze out the tea-ness from the teabags (be careful not to break bags!) and mix up the cooled milk. Discard tea bags.

4. Slowly whisk in the milky mix into the egg yolks.

5. Return this mixture to the medium saucepan and cook until thickened. Have you ever made a custard or cream pie filling, and suddenly you can feel the mixture thicken, and then you see it? You want to stir with a spatula the mixture on medium-high until it begins to thicken.

6. Whisk this into a medium bowl that has that last cup of milk that's hanging around.

7. Chill in refrigerator until cold, 1-2 hours. Go for a run at this point, or exercise! Then you won't feel bad about scarfing the ice cream when it's ready!!

8. Once mixture is cold, pour into ice cream maker and make according to ice cream maker's instructions. I set my timer for 20 minutes, checking on it every so often. It went for about 25-30 minutes and became wonderfully creamy.

9. Immediately remove from ice cream maker and into a yogurt container or airtight container. Freeze for a few hours to firm, or eat right away! Woohoo!

This ice cream is so milky tea yummy and fragrant with bergamot and lavender... you can make this recipe with any teabags- chai tea, orange pekoe... etc! May as well experiment with whatever you have kicking around. Also, because I used Half & Half instead of cream, and 2 egg yolks instead of 5, it's lighter, lower in fat and less eggy than the regular recipe, yet still tastes perfectly creamy.

Enjoy!!

xo Lyndsay

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Vintage Ice Cream Advertisements

Raspberry, vanilla and orange-pineapple-- that is a bit bonkers, isn't it! Sounds delightful to me. Especially if it comes with some creepy "take me to your dealer" alien acid trip bunnies that are made from cut-out dyed pink slices of bread.

Simple, effective... baseball... orange... two cool stuck together party pops blasting reverse out of that paper Popsicle bag... my fave flavour when I was a kid was root beer popsicle. Or grape.

Keep those scoops coming, Sealtest! I could really tuck into that layered-with-strawberries parfait. And that blue milk-glass scalloped plate is cute too.

Food styling never looked so good! This could be sold at Aberdeen Mall in Richmond, BC at the fake food store. Too bad the fake food is like $200 for a plate of tempura.

The "striated skin flap" style of ice cream layering in this dish of chocolate Meadow Gold ice cream is slightly disturbing. Still, I would spoon into this, like, majorly hard.


{Aren't these the cutest and coolest ads? From Flickr user Christian. These will inspire me to create my next ice creams. }

Ice cream by Coco Cake flavours on deck, stay tuned:

Milky black tea ice cream
Earl grey ice cream
Thai iced tea ice cream
Matcha green tea frozen yogurt
Cereal milk ice cream with Frosted Flakes! (as inspired by Momofuku Milk Bar)

See you soon! xo Lyndsay

Friday, February 5, 2010

Mexican Flavours Inspired Ice Cream Sundae!





We have the loveliest neighbors... we love our friends who live in the suites in our home, and our next door neighbors are just about the best you could ask for. Over the past few years we rock some serious food get-togethers-- Indian Food night (everyone makes everything from scratch!) and on more than one occasion, Mexican Food night!! We all love Mexican food and it's hard to find really good Mexican food in Vancouver, BC. Beautiful, fresh and abundant sushi, yes... amazing Chinese food, yes... but there aren't too many Mexican spots here... so we make our own...

For this particular evening, I wanted to use this Mexican pure vanilla extract which my friend Tara brought back from me on her recent trip to Mexico. It was fun experimenting with something other than my usual Madagascar pure vanilla extract... but to be honest I couldn't really discern a major flavour difference. In fact, I thought the Mexican vanilla extract smelled a bit like one of my childhood smell memories: New York seltzer vanilla soda.

ANYHOO... I made a Mexican Inspired Ice Cream Sundae, with Mexican Vanilla Extract and Madagascar Vanilla Bean ice cream, cinnamon chocolate fudge sauce and toasted almonds!

I followed the Philadelphia-style (no eggs) vanilla ice cream recipe in my book The Perfect Scoop, but used less sugar than called for. It still turns out quite sweet, even with less sugar! I also added two teaspoons of vanilla extract instead of the 3/4 teaspoon requirement... ! This may have contributed to the final ice cream ice-milky consistency... or was it that I substituted heavy cream for 10% milk fat cream? Heehee! I'm not afraid to experiment with a recipe... this is why I have churned out water muffins before (heh).

{For the Mexican fudge sauce}, I modified a recipe to create this:

3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup (or more) freshly brewed strong coffee
16 ounces semisweet chocolate chips (roughly 2 cups! I know it's not really weight-equivalent but it works in a pinch).
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

How to:
Bring cream and 1/2 cup coffee to boil on medium heat, in a medium saucepan. Remove from heat. Add chocolate and cinnamon. Stir gently and slowly until chocolate is melted and sauce is smooth. Mix in vanilla extract.

For the almonds, you can buy dry roasted almonds and chop them up, or you can toast your own by buying raw almonds, laying them out on a cookie sheet and baking them for 10 minutes at 350 degrees. Let cool and they will crisp up, then chop.

This is a very rich sundae so I made small but just-enough portions in small drinking glasses... a perfect ending!

EASY ZONE: You can also just buy a good quality vanilla bean ice cream (I like Haagen Dasz Five), make the sauce (it's fast and easy!) and top with store-bought toasted almonds too...! You could also lightly dust the sundae with a pinch of cinnamon too..

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