Earl Grey Tea Ice Cream

Earl Grey Tea Ice Cream is something that I've been thinking of trying for a little while now. It just seemed to me to be a flavor that should work... And what do you know, I was actually right!

Bergamot tea, with a hint of lemon, in a smooth ice cream, turns out to be really great. Just strange enough to make it interesting, but not so strange that it no longer corresponds to our idea of what ice cream is.

This is the first time I've used both glucose syrup and gelatin in ice cream as well. Neither is strictly necessary, but they really does give the ice cream a better texture.

Earl grey tea flavored ice cream

Ingredients
3,5 dl Milk
1,5 dl Whipping cream
1 tbsp Glucose syrup
6 Egg yolks
1,25 dl Sugar
5 tsp Earl grey tea
1 Lemon
1 Gelatin sheet


Place the gelatin sheet in a bowl of cold water to soften.

Peel the rind of the lemon, using a vegetable peeler or similar. It needs to be thin enough that you don't get the white stuff.

Pour the cream, milk and glucose syrup into a pot and mix. Bring it to a boil, while stirring, as soon as it starts boiling, take it off the heat. Add the tea and lemon rind, give it a stir, and let it sit for 5 minutes to infuse.

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl.

Once the 5 minutes are up, strain the milk-mixture through a fine sieve. I found that I still had some small bits of tea leaf at this point, so I recommend straining it through a piece of muslin (or if you're REALLY patient, and/or don't have muslin, a coffee filter).

Whisk the milk-mixture into the eggs, and pour into a clean pot. Heat, while constantly stirring, until it thickens and the froth on top disappears (80-85°C, no higher).

Take the pot of the heat, and dunk the bottom of the pot into a bowl of cold water (or just fill your sink to 10cm or so with cold water, and use that). The point is to take the heat out of the pot so that the custard doesn't keep cooking.

Take the gelatin sheet out of the cold water, and squeeze it so get rid of as much water as you can. Add it to the custard and whisk it in.

Strain the custard into a clean bowl, and set in the fridge to cool.

Once it's cooled, at least to room temperature, churn in the ice cream machine.

Uncooked custard

Cooked custard

Starting to churn

Almost done