O hai! Jus cheking bakside. All gud. Proseed.Man, do I wish this Earl Grey Tea ice cream were sitting in my freezer right now on this hot-ass weekend, but it’s not. I made this ice cream about a month ago, and it is long gone!
In the winter months I buy a big box of assorted teas that are put on the market for holiday gifts – you know, the ones with four each of sixteen different varieties. I really don’t care which tea bag I use to steep my morning cup of tea; I have no preference. But that changed with a batch of truffles I made a few months ago.
I made Earl Grey tea truffles (along with basil, port, and curry truffles) a few months ago, and it turned out that I absolutely loved the Earl Grey truffles. I couldn’t stop eating them. The Earl Grey truffles went long before the others.
Then I left an empty tea cup with an Earl Grey tea bag still in it on my computer desk. I kept getting wafts of this wonderful smell, and realized it was coming from the tea cup, so picked up the cup and started huffing what I can only describe as my most favorite scent in the world – fragrant tea olive (nothing to do with olives or the actual plant tea comes from, but the flowers are used to scent teas).
I know that what I smelled in the tea cup is the sweet, floral, citrus smell of Bergamot oil used in Earl Grey tea, but this particular used cup and tea bag smelled like fragrant tea olive flowers to me.
Fragrant tea olive (Osmanthus fragrans) is an evergreen shrub with fruity, sweet-smelling flowers, that unfortunately does not grow as far North as Pennsylvania (add fragrant tea olive to the list of requirements for the next place I live, along with Waffle House and no snow), but it is in almost every backyard in the state I grew up in, South Carolina. The tiny flowers are barely visible, but the intoxicating scent can travel blocks on a breeze.
Sorry to be all dreamy about this scent when I’m not capable of providing smell-o-vision, but it really is a scent that takes me back to playing outdoors as a child on cool fall, winter, and spring nights (grown outdoors, it blooms every month with an “R”, or so the saying goes).
So, if I had to name a favorite tea at the moment, it would be Earl Grey tea. After a few days of huffing the dirty tea cup (yeah, I kept it on the desk), I decided to make Earl Grey tea ice cream.
Earl Grey Tea Ice Cream
makes about 1 quart
1 cup whole milk
2 cups half and half (can use heavy cream for a richer ice cream)
3/4 cup sugar
5-6 Earl Grey tea bags
5 egg yolks
- Warm the milk, half and half, and sugar in a saucepan. Remove from heat, place tea bags in the pan, cover and steep at room temperature for an hour. Remove tea bags.
- Rewarm tea-infused milk. Whisk egg yolks together in a separate bowl. Slowly pour the milk mixture into the bowl with egg yolks, whisking constantly.
- Return the milk and egg mixture to the saucepan, and cook over medium heat, stirring and scrapping the bottom of the pan constantly until the mixture thickens to a custard and coats the spatula.
- Cool the mixture, and freeze in your ice cream maker.
30 comments:
What a delicious idea!
Mmm, I love Early Grey. This sounds delicious. Lovely pictures too.
That sounds really good! I've never tried using teas in my ice cream but need to try it soon.
I love to incorporate tea in my baked goods. But infusing earl grey tea in ice cream is an even better idea! Why didn't I think of this earlier? :) Thanks for the recipe!
I really want to try this now, and not just with Earl Grey. I want to make ice cream with all of the many teas I have in my cupboard. Great idea. Thanks. :)
Have you ever done Earl Grey cookies? I love Earl Grey and drink it when I'm pregnant as a sort of coffee subsitute because I can't stand coffee for nine months. I read this post quite some time ago and have been meaning to make cookies and finally did it yesterday. I iced them with vanilla buttercream and decided to call them London Fog cookies. I'll send you the recipe if you like, although basically any white cookie recipe with milk in it (at least 1/4 cup, I'd say) would probably do.
Mrs. K - Sounds absolutely divine! And, sure, I'd love the recipe.
If you want more Earl Grey flavour, just open the bags and dump the leaves into the cream, stirring to incorporate. Then sieve it off. This works better if your loose tea is somewhat large (not the sawdust consistency of some bag teas).
If you love bergamot-=
I just got my hands on a household cleanser that is bergamot and grapefruit. a bit pricey but worth it.
marshalls- i think.
They taste so... so unexpected. Deliciuos :)
I've just done one batch of this earl grey ice cram. Next time, I will double the quantity, because I've already eaten half of it!
My gooooooooooood! So delicious!
Thanks for the recipe.
I think you forgot to credit David Lebovitz for the recipe. No offense meant, it's just that your copyright notice shows that you obviously care about due credit.
Lydia - Not sure why I would credit David Lebovitz for this recipe. I do love his work and own his book, The Perfect Scoop, which contains no such recipe for Earl Gray ice cream. All of my written words and pictures in this post are my own. It is very clear in copyright law that a list (i.e, a recipe’s ingredients) cannot be owned. Lebovitz is not the first person to make ice cream, after all. My grandma's recipe for peach ice cream is just like this, minus tea and plus peaches.
Just found your post on Tea Ice Cream. I recently made Chai Ice Cream --- OMG, it is like a frozen Chai latte in a bowl. I have a basic ice cream recipe (don't we all? :-) --- I use condensed milk for the sweetener instead of sugar . . . even with half and half or whole milk, it seems to make for a richer tasting product, and steeped the spices for chai (including the peppercorns). It is a wonderful (wonderful!) ice cream. But I can't wait to try yours . . . Thanks for posting it.
Wow! Just made some of this ice cream, used the same recipe and made some chai ice cream too... They came out amazing.... I made a double batch of each, and now I'm wondering... ice cream sandwiches? Any recommendations?
George - I haven't made ice cream sandwiches, but I do have this recipe bookmarked. Give it a go!
mmmm earl grey ice cream is amazing between a good chocolate sugar cookie!
I just made this! It's the best flavor I've made. Ever. Thanks!
I haven't even gotten this into the ice cream freezer yet, and I'm ready to eat the whole thing. Great recipe, thank you!
My boyfriend and I just made this one tonight. Some changes we ended up making: we didn't have whole milk, only 2% so we decided to opt for the heavy cream to make up for the lack of whole milk. Then at the end of the steeping hour, we tasted the concoction and it didn't taste very Earl Greyish so we added 3 more bags for a short period of time as we were rewarming the milk prior to tempering the eggs.
Overall, the ice cream tastes great, but is very VERY rich. We're only able to have half to even a 3rd of the normal serving size. Next time, we might use half and half and the 2%milk.
Thank you for this awesome recipe! I just made it as part of my "luxury dinner" for the Foodbuzz competition and my guests were over the moon about it! The texture and flavors were pitch-perfect. Thank you!
Thank you - just what I was looking for a straight forward Earl Grey ice cream recipe which I guess I could also adapt with Chai tea bags too.
i just tried this recipe today. it came out amazing! it's hard to enjoy ice cream on a rainy day like today, but the fact that it has that deep earl grey flavor makes it so easy! thank you for sharing this! all of your other ice cream recipes are on my to-do list! =]
Love this recipe (was looking for one to use for Roibos tea...will have to try the Earl Grey after this one). I've GOT to say, I have LOVED reading the comments....I LOVE it how everyone loves your idea.
I also enjoyed reading your post before the recipe....the fragrant olive flower sounds phenominal. Have you tried steeping the flowers in the milk and making ice-cream?
When I placed the milk and egg mixture back into the saucepan, it didnt turn into a custard-like batter. It didnt coat my spatula. I was waiting for it to have that consistency, until I cooked half of it off and began to wonder if I made it the right way. I did it exactly as the recipe stated. Are we returning the mixture back into the saucepan just to cook the eggs?
Mindy - The milk and egg mixture gets returned to the saucepan to cook further so it can turn into a custard.
After returning it back to the saucepan, how long did it take you to turn it into a custard? I don't cook much, so if you can explain, that would be so so great!
Mindy - Cooking times may vary depending on different variables (stove temperature, elevation, amount of liquid, etc.). If you are not familiar with making custard, it may be best for you to use temperature as your gauge. A custard should form when the mixture reaches 160 degrees. You can cook the mixture a little longer without damage(up to 180 degrees, but more than that and you'll get curdling), but keep in mind that the custard will cook a little further once it's removed from the heat. When making custard for ice cream, it really doesn't matter how thick you get the custard. Just make sure you get the custard to 160 degrees to thoroughly cook the eggs for food safety reasons.
I tasted a beautyful version of Earl Grey ice cream a couple of years ago. Rich with a distinct taste of Earl Grey tea. And with crunchy bits of witch exploded with taste of Earl Grey tea.
I guess the chef did put in dry tea leaves or caramelized dry tea leaves in the ice cream mix when it started to cream up/freeze. It was surely fantastic. I'll make some of your ice cream as soon I get myself an ice cream machine.
I was looking for a simple tea ice cream recipe, and this sounds delicious. Thank you for sharing!
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