At last.... Matcha Tea Ice Cream

Thank God I felt better yesterday so I was able to work on my matcha tea ice cream. My ice cream maker has been sitting in the freezer for almost three weeks waiting for action. First it was the freezer issue then my busy sked then just feeling sick. Anyway, I finally did it last night. It seemed like a million steps from the preparation of the custard (which is really critical because it will affect the texture of the ice cream) down to churning it. Well, just preparing the recipe is already time consuming because I have to do a lot of conversion. I'm so used to cups and spoons. But thanks to Rachel again for the recipe.

I chose her recipe because of the custard aspect. Isn't it obvious I love custard?
But have I told you that making custard is a bit scary too? There's that fear of turning it into scrambled eggs if not tempered correctly. What a relief when at last I'm past that stage and my custard looks smooth and fine

I wanted to do a little twist and incorporate red beans into the ice cream. You know, puree it then mix it at the last minute to have that swirl effect. I just thought that would be awesome. If there's green tea, red beans can't be far behind. And so I made my sweet red beans really special and used part honey part brown sugar to sweeten it. I pureed it with a little water before simmering it again to reduce it into a thicker consistency.


The recipe calls for 9 tablespoons green tea powder and I only have a little can which is roughly five tablespoons so I used it all up hoping it would be enough. But when I tasted it, it's pretty strong so I added a little more milk. Thank you K for the matcha tea powder!


I poured the batter through a fine sieve in a bowl over ice water like Rachel said and soon I have it ready in my freezer bowl for the first freezing.


After two hours, I was ready to churn my ice cream. It took a little bit long for me to figure out how to attach the ice cream maker to the stand up mixer but I did it YAY!

Look at how it started, barely filling the bowl.

Then volume just increased as it stirs/churns?

Then I added the pureed red beans. Yikes, kinda messy :-(

Churn churn churn ... or stir stir stir .....and it seemed to disappear

Where is the swirl? I imagine ribbons of red bean puree and there was none. And I ran out. All I have is the whole ones- yes, cooked nice and yummy but whole red beans. Oh well, I don't have time to puree it. So I just added a couple of tablespoons and thought, I could do with bits of red beans here and there. I finished with 2 1/2 containers of churned goodness and this is how it came to be.


Matcha Tea Ice Cream
adapted from Rachel's

Ingredients (For 1.5L)
5 tbsp good quality Matcha
3 cups whole milk
6 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups heavy cream

Method:
1. Mix matcha powder with 3 tablespoon sugar mixture till combined
2. Place milk in a saucepan on medium heat and bring up to almost boiling take off heat
3. While heating the milk, in a separate bowl whisk eggs and the rest of the sugar until pale and thick
4. Pour hot milk slowly into egg mixture while stirring constantly
5. Pour mixture back into pan and on low heat stir custard until thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon.
6. Pour one third of the custard mixture into the matcha + sugar mixture and combine. Then place Matcha mixture into the rest of the custard mixture and stir to combine.
7. Strain mixture into a bowl, and cool over an ice bath then when cool cover with cling wrap and chill over night.
8. Place strainer in a bowl and pour thickened cream through, then pour matcha custard through and fold mixture until well incorporated.
9. Place in ice cream maker and chill according to instructions, when finished chill in the freezer for 2 – 3 hours.

I achieved the texture, the matcha-red bean flavor combo but I have to figure out how to do the ribbons or swirl effect next time.