Matcha and white chocolate ice cream is the creamiest and the softest, as claimed by renowned chef Heston Blumenthal. I can attest he was not wrong.
Heston’s recipes are super reliable
This particular recipe for the perfect ice cream was published a good many years ago in one of the weekend supplements. I had it on my ‘to do’ list for a long time before finally trying it out. That was because Heston’s recipes were considered to be famously tough and complex.
Some of them might be quite tricky but if you put your mind to it you’ll find they work extremely well. Heston’s fish and chips recipe is unrivalled, as well as his pizza. And of course everyone now does triple cooked chips, forgetting that Mr Blumenthal was the original trailblazer on the chip front.
What’s special about this ice cream recipe?
First of all, it’s eggless. Secondly, it’s in fact very simple, if you overlook the precise temperature measurements and the length of chilling time.
A mix of cream and milk plus sugar or another sweetening agent, like white chocolate in this instance, is heated up to just before the boiling point, to 90C/194F.
Even if you don’t have a food probe, it is easy to recognise when to take the mix off the heat: when small bubbles start appearing around the surface of the liquid, and it steams like mad.
The matcha powder and white chocolate flavouring, which is a combination I just adore, is prepared separately. The chocolate, broken up into small pieces, needs to be softened but not quite melted (lest it splits) in a microwave at short bursts.
Matcha powder should be stirred into the chocolate and together they go into the hot milk mix. Invariably some matcha will clump up so it’s best to strain the mix before chilling it for as long as possible, up to 24 hours. The longer it chills, the easier the churning.
Churning in ice cream maker
If you have a good churning machine, a great result can be expected.
The problem is that not many of us own a proper state-of-the-art Gaggia or Sage (as advertised by Mr B).
We either look for a no-churn recipe or resignedly dump the clunky bucket in the freezer, forget about it and retrieve it a month later.
We pour our mix in hurriedly, lest the machine warm up too much, the paddle swirls away – and it gets stuck about 5 minutes later. The ice cream clings in solid stalagmites to the sides and neither brute force nor pleading can prise it off, let alone churn further and soften.
How to churn successfully
I came upon the solution by accident, churning two flavours one after the other. The first, with the ice cream maker bucket straight out of the freezer, did precisely what I described above. I had to attack the frozen mass with a hand mixer, a stick blender, and ice pick and black magic. All of which eventually blitzed it half-respectably.
The second batch went in half-heartedly as I was sure nothing good would come out of it, considering the not-so-frozen-any-more bucket. What a surprise! Smooth, creamy, churned to perfection, frozen but soft ice cream, there was no fault with this concoction.
The trick then is to freeze your bucket but let it stand at room temperature for about 20 minutes before you start churning. The chilled surface of the container will still be freezing the mix but not as abruptly, and the paddle will turn far more happily and far easier. No rush, that’s the secret. Who would have thought?
More ice cream recipes
Recipe for mango ice cream made in a blender. Smooth mango ice cream without eggs, churned in an ice cream maker. Easy and quick, blitz the ingredients in a blender and use the ice cream churner to freeze.
Mascarpone sorbet with lemon flavour inspired by a River Café recipe is smooth, creamy and unbelievably refreshing. This is a no-churn recipe.
Very chocolate ice cream recipe, easily made at home. Eggless recipe for rich chocolate ice cream made with an ice cream maker and good quality milk chocolate.
More white chocolate desserts
Fudgy white chocolate banana blondie recipe. This white chocolate blondie is made with mashed bananas and Brazil nut toffee chunks. Easy blondie recipe - the only hard part is making the toffee.
White chocolate kladdkaka recipe - ‘sticky cake’ in literal translation. Kladdkaka is a Swedish sticky chocolate cake, made with white, dark or milk chocolate. This is my white chocolate kladdkaka version and one of the best cakes ever.
Burnt white chocolate blondie with cherries and pistachios, fudgy squares of bliss. I simply pity everyone who will never try one of these.