Egg-Free Ice Cream

This egg-free ice cream recipe is my first choice for trying out dry flavorings such as tea, coffee, and spices. It’s best for highlighting more delicate ingredients since egg yolks have a pronounced presence in homemade ice cream sometimes. I can’t recommend it for watery or fatty ingredients such as fresh fruit or chocolate couverture. It might work, but the results will be much better using recipes suited to such ingredients.

This isn’t merely your average custard-style ice cream base with the egg yolks omitted. It’s specifically balanced for green tea ice cream (and presumably other such dry ingredients) by the fine folks at the San Francisco Baking Institute. SFBI’s thousand-page tome of all things baked, sweet, and chocolaty is quickly becoming encrusted with flour and unidentified liquids from kitchen abuse.

I consider this recipe a light ice cream base at 75% whole milk and 25% heavy cream. It doesn’t exactly sound like diet food, so let me point out this fairly popular vanilla ice cream recipe as a reference point. The base for Alton Brown’s recipe is 75% half-and-half and 25% heavy cream. Plus 8 egg yolks.

If enjoying a few scoops of homemade ice cream entails thoughts of cholesterol, omelets, and a treadmill all at the same time, then I’d look somewhere else for a frozen dessert fix. I have actually tried that recipe and it’s absolutely delicious, but everyone knows it’s impossible to satiate an ice cream craving with two-teaspoon servings.

Tried, Tested, and True hosted by Equal Opportunity Kitchen

recipe adapted from the Green Tea Ice Cream formula in Michel Suas’ Advanced Bread and Pastry

Oolong Tea Ice Cream using an Egg-Free Base

makes approximately 2 pounds / 900 grams

4 3/4 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1 cup nonfat powdered milk
10 grams stabilizer (optional)

a handful of oolong tea (1 to 2 cups loosely packed tea leaves)

Notes:

• The original recipe calls for glucose powder. Even if I knew where to get it, I probably wouldn’t use it, so I substituted granulated sugar instead. Sugar is twice as sweet as glucose powder so I added half as much by weight.
• The stabilizer improves the texture of the ice cream but don’t worry about it if you don’t have it. Examples of stabilizers include guar flour, carob flour, pectin, and gelatin.

Combine the milk, cream, and oolong tea leaves in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Remove from the heat and let the tea leaves steep in the milk and cream mixture for a few minutes.

Strain the milk and cream mixture and discard the tea leaves. Add the sugar, nonfat powdered milk, and stabilizer. Heat over medium-low heat until barely simmering (185ºF). Cool the ice cream mixture to room temperature.

Refrigerate for at least four hours or overnight.

Stir the cold ice cream mix briefly before pouring into your actively churning ice cream machine. Churn until the desired consistency is reached. Pack the ice cream into the chilled container of your choice and freeze until firm.

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