Lapsang souchang-honey ice cream with almond brittle

This recipe is definitely an experiment. I went into it not at all sure it was going to work and, not having tried the final ripened product yet, I'm still trepidatious. The problem is balancing the smokiness of the tea with the sweetness of the honey while both flavors vary with temperature. And then there's the question of whether smoky ice cream is palatable at all whatever the balance is.

I used Jeni Britton's cream cheese and corn starch recipe again (reduced by a third like last time as I don't think there's going to be call for a big batch of this flavor). Because I'm infusing the dairy with something that needs to be strained out I had to make a few small procedural changes. Also, I bought a brick of very mild fresh cream cheese to avoid the tanginess that came through last time. I'm going to keep that in the freezer to avoid increased tang from aging and just slice off chunks as needed.

I started with:
1 1/3 cups whole milk
7 ounces heavy cream
and five teaspoons of lapsang souchang.
That's a lot of tea for that much liquid, but I've had trouble infusing flavor into dairy before so I adjusted upwards. All that went into a pot which I heated over medium heat until boiling and then simmered for four minutes. I found I had to stir frequently to keep the tea in the dairy and not up in the froth.

After four minutes I strained out the tea leaves and returned the dairy to the cleaned pot. I whisked in a half cup of honey--wildflower as I want the honey flavor to be noticeable against the lapsang--and returned it to the heat. Once the honey was well dissolved I added a scant Tablespoon of cornstarch dissolved in a couple Tablespoons of milk and brought the mix up to a boil to thicken.

Then all I had to do was add a pinch of salt and another ounce of cream to compensate for the water absorbed by the tea leaves and then whisk in the cream cheese. That involved quite a bit of whisking and even then I still had some bits of cream cheese floating about. At this point the mix had the look and texture of turkey gravy and smelled really odd. After cooling it on the counter for a half hour I crossed my fingers and put it went into the refrigerator to chill overnight.

Meanwhile, time to make the almond brittle. Slivered almonds are generally recommended, but I had whole and I didn't have a sliverer so I crushed them with the bottom of a heavy saucepan. Someone, on Top Chef I think, said that that gives you better control of the size of the pieces than using a food processor. I still got a pretty wide range, but it didn't start turning into almond butter which is the usual problem I have when using a machine to chop nuts.

I ended up with a half cup of nut bits so, scaling down a Mario Batali recipe, I measured out 3 ounces of sugar and a couple teaspoons of water into a small pan and started heating it up. Batali says to cook the sugar to exactly 338 degrees, but my sugar was so shallow I couldn't get a good reading on the candy thermometer and tilting the pot made the sugar seize up so I had to add water and start again. I couldn't judge by color either since I was using the Florida Crystals sugar that still has a bit of molasses in it. So I had to go by my gut to find the right moment between soft candy and burnt sugar to stir in the almonds. A bit by smell too, now that I think about it, as that first whiff with a hint of burning is the sign to make my move. And, unexpectedly, I got it right. The almond to sugar ratio is a bit high, but that's fine for an ice cream component. Once it cooled I whacked it with a chef's knife to break it up and, when the ice cream finished churning, stirred it in.


And here it is. It's weird, but very good and it's getting surprisingly positive response from the coworkers. First off, the texture is fabulously soft and creamy straight from the freezer. That's because of the fructose from the honey I think. Without that leg up, I think the odd flavor would have a harder time being accepted.

The flavor with the honey, smoke, almond and cream has the complexity and shifting balance of a good shot of Scotch or maybe Bourbon. It's not quite the same, but it's got a lot of the same flavor components. Each bite starts sweet cream with an undertone of savory smoke. That spreads through the mouth until you swallow and suddenly the smoke is to the fore with the sweet cream underneath. If you got a piece of brittle, the smoke, almond and crisp sugar mingle as you chew. I'm not sure I'm doing a great job of explaining here; it's complex and unusual so it's hard to put into words.

It's interesting that the flavor gets cruder as the ice cream melts until it's just bright honey and sharp smoke. When fully frozen, both of those are damped allowing the flavor of cream tea to tie them together I think.

Caramel black tea ice cream

Actually, it's caramel black tea ice cream with a lemon caramel swirl and bits of shortbread.

I've been meaning to make a black tea ice cream for a while now; in particular I've been thinking of using Earl Grey. But I'm out of that and I have got plenty of caramel tea which is just straight ahead black tea with little cubes of (freeze-dried maybe?) caramel in it. I've also got some caramel sauce leftover from my bananas foster misadventure a while back that I wanted to use up. The shortbread I bought long ago for that Earl Grey ice cream I never made and have been nibbling away at since. Why not add in what I've got left?

I've had some problems infusing tea into ice cream previously in a chai ice cream I made last year and a green tea ice cream I made before starting the blog so I gave some consideration to my approach. Despite reservations over the possibility of stewing the infusion, I decided to brew the tea the same way I've made coffee ice cream. I used four Tablespoons of tea for two cups of cream and one of milk, the same amount of tea I would use for six cups of water. All those go into a pot cold, slowly brought to a boil and then let to cool for 15 minutes. A taste right from the pot was pretty bitter as I had feared, but I'm adding a full cup of sugar so that can be overcome. It's also interesting to note that the tea absorbed a good half cup of water out of the mix.

That cup of sugar I mixed with four egg yolks. That's a lot for the two and a half cups of dairy left, but what the heck. I'm not experimenting with weird substitutions today so I may as well go for super-premium levels of fat. I made a custard the usual way and cooled down the mix. It got to a syrupy level texture which is about right for going into the churn. When it gets to more of a pudding texture you know it's going to thicken up too quick and you won't get the right amount of air churned in.

As for the caramel sauce, I squeezed in fresh lemon juice until it had thinned out enough to be gooey, but not chewy at freezer temperatures. There was already a bit of booze in it so I knew it wouldn't freeze up. To be honest, I was under the misapprehension that caramel plus lemon made butterscotch which is an odd thing to think as it includes neither butter nor scotch. Actually, butterscotch is made by melting brown sugar and adding butter, scotch optional, which makes more sense. Anyway, both caramel and lemon go nicely with tea so no complaints at the results.

And the shortbread I froze and then cut into half-inch pieces. I didn't want the crumb-filled texture I got from the pumpernickel Nutella ice cream so I was careful to keep the pieces intact and tossed the crumbs. In retrospect the pumpernickel and Nutella would have made a great bread pudding instead of a weird ice cream; If I wasn't so fixated on ice cream I would have thought of that.

So, anyway, churning went better than it's gone in a long time, creating a smooth creamy texture without a lot of drama from freezing too quickly or slowly. Once I got it to soft-serve texture I scooped it out by quarters and layered each with drizzles of caramel and handfuls of shortbread and then folded it all together.

After ripening, it hardened up just right, slightly firmer but keeping all of the creaminess, just about as good as ice cream gets really. I think the caramel sauce melted into the ice cream a bit which probably helped the texture there, but the thicker streams kept some separate identity. I probably should have used straight black tea instead of the caramel version to get more contrast between the ice cream and the swirl. Right now they're both primarily caramel with notes of dairy and tea or citrus depending. I don't think you could even identify that note as tea if it wasn't pointed out to you which is a bit of a shame. I shouldn't complain much about that as the ice cream really is spectacularly good and any possible refinements are out of intellectual interest more than sensual improvements. The shortbread is, of course, buttery and crumbly and a lovely addition. See, this is what happens when you stop screwing around and make ice cream out of actual ice cream ingredients using actual ice cream recipes. Well, enough of that, my next ice cream will have to be extra weird to compensate.