Tag: Green

Mint Matcha Ice Cream

Mint Matcha Ice Cream // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler

Mint Matcha Ice Cream // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler
Mint Matcha Ice Cream // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler
Mint Matcha Ice Cream // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler

When I made the anise ice cream that I posted about last week, it made me realize how truly simple it is to make your own ice cream. I mean, if you’ve got the ice cream attachment for the Kitchen Aid like my roommate does, or some other kind of ice cream churner. I found myself asking why I hadn’t been making my own crazily flavored ice cream for years. And you know what? I didn’t have a good answer.

So I thought I might as well start now. I’ve had some matcha sitting in my drawer since I made these madeleines, and I’d been wanting to try some matcha ice cream. But I didn’t want to make JUST matcha ice cream. After thinking about what flavor combinations might work with matcha – chocolate? lemon? – I decided to go with mint. I liked the idea of the herbaceous, refreshing mint with the earthy, almost savory matcha. So, mint matcha ice cream it is!

I also decided to make this ice cream this week because I thought it might be nice to start doing some holiday-oriented recipes. And while the flavors in this recipe have nothing to do with St. Patrick’s Day, it is green. Definitely green. Especially if you make it the day before you’re planning on eating it.

After a little research, this recipe is adapted from and inspired by David Lebovitz, Kinfolk, and many other ice cream recipes all over the internet.

Mint Matcha Ice Cream

Ingredients

1 cup whole milk
2 cups heavy cream, divided
3/4 cup granulated sugar
a pinch of salt
1 cup fresh mint leaves, rinsed
4 tsp matcha green tea
5 egg yolks

Instructions

In a saucepan over medium heat, combine milk, 1 cup of cream, sugar, salt, and mint leaves. Stir until sugar is dissolved, and once the mixture is hot and steaming, remove the pan from heat, cover, and let it steep for one hour.

Fifteen minutes before your mint is done steeping, get out two mixing bowls. In one, combine the other 1 cup of cream and the matcha. Whisk together until thoroughly combined and no clumps remain. In the other mixing bowl, whisk together the egg yolks.

Once the mint is done steeping in the milk mixture, strain out the mint leaves, pressing them to extract all of the flavor. Re-warm the milk over low heat – you want it to be warm, not too hot – and slowly pour it into the egg yolks and whisk until combined. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan, and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a heat-proof spatula, until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of a spatula. Strain the custard into the bowl with the matcha cream, and whisk again to combine. Stir the mixture over an ice bath to cool. Once cooled thoroughly, churn in your ice cream maker according to your machine’s instructions.

Green Mint Crinkles from Honest Pretzels

Green Mint Crinkles

Green Mint Crinkles
Green Mint Crinkles

Green Mint Crinkles

As soon as we got back from Thanksgiving in Seattle, I was ready to make Christmas cookies. It was all I could think about. I knew the family upstairs had a cookbook that I loved as a kid, and that there was a recipe in that cookbook that I couldn’t wait to make for Jonah.

This is a children’s cookbook, so the greatest thing about it is that after the lists of ingredients and equipment you’ll need, there’s also a list called “Ask an adult for help with” and then the next page shows you, in illustrations, how to make the recipe. I turned right to the Green Mint Crinkles (page 126) and got started.

Green Mint Crinkles

Ingredients

1 stick of butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons peppermint extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 (2.25 oz.) jar of green cake decoration crystals

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a baking sheet with butter or oil. In a large mixing bowl, mix together melted butter, sugar, peppermint extract, and vanilla extract. In a small separate bowl, beat the egg, then add to the sugar mixture along with the milk.

Then add the flour, baking powder, salt, and green crystals. You’ll want to mix this by hand if you’re using a mixer, being sure to mix the green crystals in well. It’s always awkward when there’s a little patch of green at the bottom of the bowl, am I right?

Now make balls of dough roughly the size of a ping pong ball (I did mine a little smaller just so I could have more cookies) and place the balls on the prepared baking sheet. They can be close together because they barely spread, but they shouldn’t touch. Put them in the oven and bake for 12 minutes.

Let them cool a bit before removing them from the tray as they can be pretty fragile when you remove them. My favorite part of eating these cookies is to eat them when they’re still pretty warm and, when your mouth is full of cookie, to inhale. You get this minty steam and it tastes so good and feels like mint oil but in your MOUTH. Ok, I’ll stop. Enjoy with a glass of milk!