Yeah yeah, everyone waxes poetic about sweet tea and the South but it feels so flat to me when people do that. So I am going to spare you a long-winded story about front porches, grandmaw, and tea so sweet it give you diabetes. We like tea, we like it sweet, and we drink it. It would be like a Bostonian going on and on about walking to their favorite Dunkie's in the snow.
All that being said, tea is a delicious flavor on its on and in other things, specifically ice cream. I've been experimenting with tea ice cream a little this summer, beginning with this earl grey lavender ice cream, and my latest experiments took me here. It all started with these candied lemon slices from Trader Joe's I thought would be really good chopped up and thrown in ice cream. My mind wandered... tea and lemon. Tea ice cream. It wasn't long before I was pulling out the Cuisinart ice cream maker, the insert I always keep frozen in the summer, and I was proclaiming myself a genius before long.
Sweet Tea Ice Cream with Candied Lemon
Ingredients
- 2 cups heavy whipping cream
- 2 cups whole milk
- 8 black tea bags (to equal about ¼ cup loose leaves)
- 4 egg yolks
- ⅓ cup sugar
- 4 candied lemon slices chopped
Instructions
- Mix the heavy cream and milk in a saucepan with a tight fitting lid.
- Bring to just a simmer, where it's warm to the touch but not boiling. Remove from the heat and add the loose tea and stir well to combine.
- Cover the pan with the lid and let steep for 5-10 minutes.
- Strain the tea leaves out, using a mesh strainer.
- In a separate (large) bowl, mix the egg yolks and sugar together.
- A spoonful at a time, add the warm cream mixture, keeping the eggs constantly in motion. Once all of the cream and all of the eggs have been mixed, strain the combined mixture over the mesh strainer back into the saucepan.
- Cook the combination mixture over medium heat, stirring almost constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
- Pour the mixture into a bowl and wrap tightly with plastic wrap. Refrigerate until chilled, or overnight.
- Pour mixture into ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer's instructions. Once the ice cream starts thickening up considerably, add in the chopped candied lemon slices and let those mix in until the ice cream is ready.
- Decant to freezer-safe storage containers and let ripen overnight in the freezer before eating.
So even though we're in the last bits of summer here, this recipe for sweet tea ice cream needs to go into your rotation now so hold on to those last bits of the slow life before the pace picks up. Some might say this is best enjoyed on the front porch.
