Ice Cream, Take 2 (Vanilla Chai)

[bryant]

I started with my previous recipe, and modified it to be in line with this one. I dropped the vanilla and changed the dairy products to one quart of half-and-half as per the second recipe — I’d wanted to thin out the fat content a bit, and getting rid of the whipping cream should take care of that. I also used just 3/4ths of a cup of sugar, and a smidge less than 2 eggs. I suppose I could have scaled the second recipe up but using 1 quart of half-and-half is awfully convenient. The ratio of sugar is a bit lower than before, which should allow the tea flavor to come out more.

I used vanilla chai tea bags instead of loose-leaf tea, so I randomly guessed at 5 teabags for the infusion step. Now that I’ve made the custard and tasted it I think I was too light on the tea, but I didn’t want to do a second infusion because the custard isn’t all that hot. Also I sort of wish I’d gone for a simpler black tea; the vanilla chai will taste really good but it will refer back to plain vanilla ice cream because, well, it’s still vanilla. This is a pretty postmodern flaw when you get right down to it. Maybe I’ll do another batch with Earl Grey and more tea bags. Alternatively, I could squeeze the tea out of the bags more. Or use loose-leaf, but I’m not sure I care that much.

The custard is now cooling on the counter since I’m not in a hurry. In an hour or so I’ll transfer it to the fridge, and I’ll pull out the ice cream maker tomorrow night. I believe this means I’ll have actual ice cream on Wednesday.

Edit: I got impatient and ran the ice cream maker this morning before work, to match the chilly ice storm outside. Looks promising.

Mirrored from Population: One.

Comments

[flit.livejournal.com]

In general when infusing tea directly into milk/dairy I find that it's necessary to use a lot more tea than when infusing into water, especially if using a fine filter or tea bag (milk seems to clog the pores.) You might get better results from opening the tea bags and then straining the tea out after infusing. Cold and dairy both tone the flavors down considerably; I have yet to get a tea custard infusion I'm really happy with so next time I try I will probably just look up a recipe and see what the heck other people do to get the milk to take up the flavor well.

I'd watch an earl grey infusion carefully because the oil of bergamot might extract at a different rate from the tea and overwhelm it. Just taste it every now and again and if it starts going all bergamot WHOA then maybe take out the earl grey and add plain black tea to bring the tea part back up into balance. Flavored teas in general will probably need a bit of watching if they're made with something that milk will take up more readily than tea. (Jasmine would probably have a similar tendency to overbalance on the floral side.)

[bryant]

This all makes sense. The only thing I noticed that struck me as an attempt to get the infusion to work well was leaving the eggs until after the infusion. When I taste tested it this morning post-freezing it seemed to work OK, although the vanilla was very strong -- as you note, the milk no doubt took up the vanilla more quickly than the tea.

Overall I'm not sure it'll taste entirely tea-like; it's kind of a spice cake feel right now. But that's interesting too!