Red and Green: Is it Christmas?

My first taste of Red Bean Ice Cream was at the Brown Sugar Café in Boston. It was served with Sticky Rice and I was hooked. It was last Christmas that my sister bought me an Ice Cream machine and I finally got around to trying Red Bean Ice cream this month. I have also wanted to try Green Tea ice cream. I have not had anything with Matcha in it and so I decided to buy some and start cooking.

In a recent issue of Cuisine, was a recipe for a Vanilla Ice Cream to eat as is, or use as a base for other flavors. There were also instructions on turning the vanilla base into Green Tea Ice cream. I needed a recipe for Red Bean Paste or Tsubushian and I turned to one of my favorite bloggers, Kevin from Closet Cooking. His creations and the pictures are amazing. Kevin had a recipe for Tsubushian using canned azuki beans but I had dried beans and I found instructions on how to make the red bean paste on About.com.

I decided to make a double batch of the Cuisine Vanilla recipe and make the two flavors. The red bean paste took awhile for my preference. Only because I typically cook without much advance notice when the mood strikes and this required soaking the beans. But after that hurdle, the rest was quite easy.

The two different flavors both came out great and combined together were very tasty. The refreshing Green Tea and the sweet Red Bean together were a great match. I do prefer the Red Bean, but that is just my humble opinion.

Old Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream
Cuisine at Home, August 2008

3 Egg yolks
2 cups Heavy Cream
1 Cup Whole Milk
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 t vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

1. Whisk yolks in large bowl.
2. Heat cream, milk and sugar over medium heat until steaming, stirring occasionally, about 4 minutes
3. Temper 1/2 cup cream mixture into yolks, then whisk yolks into remaining cream mixture.
4. Cook custard over medium-low, stirring occasionally until thickened, about 3 minutes; add vanilla and salt.
5. Return mixture to a bowl and cool in an ice for 8 minutes. Remove from ice bath, cover and chill for at least 4 hours.
6. Churn in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Green Team Ice Cream
Cuisine at Home, August 2008

Add 4t Matcha (Japanese green tea powder) to the milk, cream and sugar before heating.

Red Bean Ice Cream

I used the base vanilla and mixed in the red bean paste.