One of my favorite flavors of ice cream is green tea. Back when I was a poor college student, my roommate and I would make a weekly, Friday night pilgrimage to Dreyer‘s ice cream (no, we had nothing better to do on a Friday night). It was our big treat of the week. She would try different variations of chocolate, but much to her chagrin, I remained steadfastly faithful to green tea (it’s kind of like when I was a little kid–my mother took me and my brother to Baskin Robbins on what seemed like a daily basis, and I ALWAYS ordered orange sherbet. Always).
This weekend I tried my hand at homemade green tea ice cream, and it turned out fairly yummy.
In Japan, they have green tea soft serve (oh, excuse me, I just drooled on the keyboard). Actually, they are crazy for green tea-flavored items in Japan (as am I).
Read on for the recipe!
Green Tea (Matcha) Ice Cream
Ingredients:
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup sugar
2-3 tsp of powdered green tea (matcha)
1 cup of heavy cream
1 cup of half & half
Directions:
Combine the water and sugar in a small pan and cook over low heat. Stir constantly. After the sugar dissolves, continue stirring and simmer the syrup over low for 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Add a tablespoonful of the syrup to the powdered green tea in a separate bowl and stir to dissolve. Dump that back into the sugar syrup and mix. Add the cream and the half & half and mix. Allow to cool in the fridge, then dump it into your ice cream maker and let it do its thing. Makes about 1 to 1 1/2 quarts.
You can also find the recipe here (it’s a PDF file)
oh, I bookmarked that recipe at makeicecream.com and completely forgot about it…
MMMMMMmmmm…green tea ice cream…(drool).
I was hooked on the dryer’s pints of green tea until I got a bad one. Ick. I’m not sure what was wrong with it, but I haven’t been able to look at one since. Hmmm. I think it’s time to give it another chance.
Damn, Mariko… I think I’ve gained about 5 lbs. since I started reading your blog!
You have too much food on your brain! I love green tea ice cream. I was in charge of making it when I worked at that sushi place in old town…I probably ate more than I made!Mmmm
Get out of town! You must be reading my mind. Wes’s birthday is tomorrow and I have a lot of cream left over from the party. He loves ice cream and I was thinking I would make some for him. This is perfect!
O.M.G. GREEN TEA ICE CREAM!!!! Ahhhh! Haven’t had that for years. Makes me think of fancy Japanese restaurants in L.A.
Thanks for sharing this recipe. Dare I try it here?
Oh that looks yummy. AND that bowl is gorgeous too!
i am a big fan of green tea ice cream altho all the ones i’ve had have all been soooo different from each other and some were too bitter! i guess all the asian restaurants in NYC order their ice cream from different suppliers!
Yummy! I pulled out my machine this weekend too. You know, it’s just ice cream making season.
I’ve been wanting to make green tea ice cream at home! Thanks for the recipe Mariko!
This is definitely going into the “to make” pile of recipies. We also enjoy green tea gummy-rice-things (not sure what they are really called). They’re individually wrapped soft rice balls with green tea paste centers. They taste much better than they sound and are very hard to find in the Southeast!
I had some green tea soft serve yesterday! Can’t be beat. Yours looks delicious.
perhaps you all should feel sorry for me, but I did not even try green tea ice cream until 3 weeks ago! It’s so good, especially after really spicyhot food
Oh yum! Thanks for sharing the recipe! My favorite variation on green tea ice cream is the green tea milkshake from Mos Burger. Did you ever go to one of those restaurants? They are kind of like McDonald’s but a billion times better. I think there are a few of them in Hawaii too.
i love green tea ice cream and red bean…mmmm
My mom, sisters & I had a Friday date with Carvel, where I would always get the orange sherbert with multi sprinkles. I haven’t had it in years, but MAN, I can almost taste it again…
If I could make my own green tea ice cream, I’d probably never leave the kitchen. There’s a great market nearby where I stock up, I like to alternate green tea with red bean.
Ever tried doing fried ice cream?
I luv green tea ice cream, I take special trips to the Japanese market every other weekend to get me some! 🙂 mmmmmmmm…. I also love sherbert, pineapple sherbert to be exact but I can’t find it any where!
Hi, the scoops of your matcha ice cream look good, I bet they TASTE good too! I have never imagined green tea would be such a popular flavor of ice cream over here in US… (didn’t even know that Dreyer’s got one). I just discovered a few days back that a local hawaiian ice cream brand has green tea ice cream, but until now I would make one by myself; yeah I am a big fan of green tea flavored items just as much as any other Japanese is! Haagen-Dazs’ got luscious green tea ice cream over there… yummmm…
Hey, we have Mos Burger here — I’ll have to actually go into one and check out the green tea shakes. Thanks, Heidi!
My favourite ice cream is chocolate-chip mint, so I tend to think of green tea with red bean as the Bizarro version. Looks the same! But totally different!
Oh no! Now I have a total craving for green tea and red bean ice cream. I might have to make a pilgrimage to 99 Ranch Market…
I’m a little late entering the fray…for some reason or other I was refused access to post. Go figure. As to green tea ice cream…since your after the tasty treats have you ever tried the frozen mochi at Trader Joe’s? It’s in the frozen food section (nach) and like the sweet handmade dessert (sweets) the outside I think has sweet rice skin but the inside is green tea ice cream (ONLY four to a box unfortunately). Haven’t had it in a while but great on a hot day (watch out it goes down quickly!).
yum! i love green tea ice cream. i wish i had an ice cream maker though. 🙁
Seriously, powdered green tea? Is that like instant tea? I’ve never seen it…hmmm, where would I look, Chinatown?