Rooibos and honey ice cream

After some elegant shipping arrangements the ice cream maker so kindly procured for me by the triple motion crew (see last post for detailed thanks) has finally made it to South Africa. Yippee!

However, in order to get it here within my luggage allowance I had to co-opt some help in the form of my good friend and fellow Antarctic traveller, Brian. What better way to thank him for his efforts than to make a batch of ice cream.

The original idea was to go some place in the mountains to do this but the English weather seemed to follow us across continents and the day we planned to crank there were some serious flash floods. As this was not such a good time to be up in the hills we re-located to the stoop (and even that was pretty wet).

I decided that perhapse I should try and develop some local flavours and so went for Rooibos and honey. This is a fairly common and well loved combo out here and although personaly I don’t much like it as a hot beverage, I thought it could have a shot as working well as an ice cream.

The recipe was the South African adjusted Russell mix (to account for the different fat content of the cream) and is scaled for a half-gallon freezer.

• 3  US cups cream (32% fat)
• 2 small eggs
• 0.5 US cups sugar
• 0.5 US cups honey
• 150 ml very strong Rooibos tea
• Top up to final volume with full cream milk

The decision to go for half sugar half honey was made becuase the tea flavour is quite delicate and I thought if it was all honey it might be a bit overpowering. I think the final balance of flavours was ok but I suppose the only way to really know would be to make a batch with all honey and compare. Maybe next time!

I am also not convinced that I used the most effective method of imparting tea flavour. Big D suggested that I try making a fine powder as in green tea ice cream but when I tried this in my blender it did not work very well. In the end I pummelled 6 teabags worth of leaves with the pestle and mortar and made a sludgy Rooibos espresso which I then sieved into the ice cream mix through a coffee filter.

Then it was out on the damp stoop and on with the cranking……

Brian seemed suitably impressed with the assembled contraption which he had helped to lug half way around the world.

Unfortunately at this point I made a bit of an error (well actually it was totally disastrous) by taking off the lid to check the paddles were turning properly. Even though I was pretty careful some salt got into the mix which meant that the first batch was a right off.

Thankfully I learned my lesson and the second batch did not suffer the same fate.

The final result was a pretty unusual flavour. I was not sure when I first tasted it but after a few spoon fulls it grew on me.

It was fairly rich because of all the heavy cream and I think it would benefit from being a bit lighter. Possibly less cream and maybe some citrus too. I suppose it would depend on what you want to serve it with/after. In the end we decided it was best left nude…