This is a Frankenstein's Monster type of recipe, bolted together clumsily with bits from two other recipes. It turned out great though!
I wanted to try the light ice cream base from the underbelly blog. But I didn't want a plain old milk flavor.
The easiest way to add a bit a flavor to a recipe without having to re-balance the mixture is through infusion. And I'd been fancying a Chai Tea ice cream for a while.
So I took the spices (unfortunately I didn't have any actual tea) from the Honey Chai Frozen Yogurt recipe in Dana Cree's "Hello, My name is Ice Cream" and mixed them into underbelly base...
And boom, I had a pretty successful Chai Spice Ice Cream.
There were a few other missing ingredients to be honest. All my individual stabilizers had gone off (!), so I used a generic, pre-mixed ice cream stabilizer. No problems there.
But I'd forgotten about the invert syrup and I didn't have time to make any so I substituted it for Karo Light Corn Syrup.
Structurally I think they're more or less the same but the Karo is much less sweet than invert sugar. And since the underbelly recipe isn't very sweet anyway, I was worried the Karo might tip it over into "flatness".
It was fine though. The spices are are gently warming. And the light base carries them well.
The kids obviously didn't like it. But that just meant there was more for me...
Chai Spice Ice Cream
Ingredients
Ice Cream Base
- 480 grams Milk 3.5 - 4% fat, chilled
- 240 grams Whipping / Heavy cream 32 - 40% fat, chilled
- 85 grams Skimmed Milk Powder
- 70 grams Granulated sugar
- 30 grams Dextrose
- 15 grams Karo Light Corn Syrup
- 2 grams Ice Cream Stabilizer
Chai Spice Mix
- 1 Cinnamon stick 3 inches long
- 20 Black peppercorns
- 5 Whole cloves
- 20 Green cardamom pods cracked
Instructions
- Mix all the dry ice cream ingredients (Skimmed Milk Powder, Granulated sugar, Dextrose, Ice Cream Stabilizer) together thoroughly in a bowl.
- Then add the wet ingredients (Milk, Cream, Corn Syrup) to the bowl and blend thoroughly with a stick blender. Alternatively, you can do this in a liquidizer.
- Transfer the mixture to a saucepan, add the chai spices, and stirring continuously over a medium-low heat, bring it to the the temperature at which the stabilizer will hydrate.
- This temperature varies from stabilizer to stabilizer and will be written on the packet. It should never boil!
- When the mixture reaches the correct temperature it will start to thicken. Take it off the heat. Cool in an ice bath. And then refrigerate in a bowl with a lid for as long as you can stand.
- If you leave it overnight in the fridge it will benefit the texture and flavor of the ice cream, giving the spices more time to infuse. But certainly wait until it's down to fridge temperature!
- Strain the mixture through sieve to remove the spices. Pour the mixture into your ice cream maker
- Churn until it has the consistency of whipped cream. Then transfer it to a plastic freezer box and freeze for around 1 hour.
- After an hour it should be soft enough to serve directly from the freezer but firm enough to melt slowly. If you've left it in the freezer for longer and it's too hard to serve, simply leave it out until it's softened.
So, you just leave the cinnamon sticks and cardamon seed pods in the mixture after chilling overnight and add them to the ice cream machine? Nowhere in this recipe does it indicate when, or if, you should strain the mix to remove those items before churning> Just wondering.
Step 7 is the part about straining the mixture.
Sorry Chuck, you’re right. I’ve fixed it. I didn’t leave the mixture overnight. Just until it had come down to fridge temperature.