Pu-erh Tea Ice Cream 普洱茶雪糕

Something for the Chinese tea lover's pleasure...a soothing scoop or two of rich creamy homemade ice cream thoroughly scented and flavored with the earthy woodsy fragrance of Pu-erh tea 普洱茶.  We love Chinese Pu-erh tea in our house and drink it every single day.  

And since we also like to make our own ice cream (we've been doing for years even though we don't have an ice cream maker!) we decided to put these two favorite things together into one perfectly tea scented and creamily deliciously sweet Pu-erh Tea Ice Cream 普洱茶雪糕.  

Oh my gosh, I love this tea ice cream!  Why the heck didn't I do this before?  Turns out tea and ice cream is a made in heaven combination of fragrance and creaminess and just the perfect thing to go along with a leisurely afternoon tea break!

Turkish Delight Sorbet

It's been hot, hot, hot this summer in Hong Kong and an oncoming typhoon has made the weather even more toasty roasty than before.  "I'm melting...melting..."  as the Wicked Witch of Oz did screech.  

So it seemed the thing to do to make this chillingly appropriate Turkish Delight Sorbet, a delightful, elegant and cooling bit of rose flavored sweet ice just balanced with a touch of tart lime.  Super easy to make, wonderful to look at and just the thing for the hottest days of the year!

Luscious Lychee Ice Cream

I remind all our dear readers that this is the time of year for the Queen of Summer Fruits, the lovely Lychee!  We've been gorging ourselves on luscious, juicy lychees, desperate to gobble down as many as we can before they disappear until next year.  We got inspired by the abundance of lychee and the hot sweltering temperatures of the summer to make our favorite homemade summer treat, ICE CREAM!  

You've got to check out our Lychee Ice Cream, 荔枝雪糕, a soft luscious velvety ice cream packed through and through with delectable real lychee flavor and aroma.  We think it's the best ice cream we've ever made...voted our new family favorite ice cream flavor!

Star Anise Ice Cream 八角雪糕

If you are one of those, as I am, that love the heady almost erotic taste and aroma of licorice then you will love, love, love this ice cream!  This is a spice infused ice cream made from my love of Star Anise, a wonderfully versatile spice that is used in Chinese cooking mostly for its excellent companionship with savory meats.  

So into this spice am I that I have been experimenting with Star Anise in sweet foods, in my baking for one and now in my ice cream making.  So here is our Star Anise Ice Cream, 八角雪糕, a wowzer of an cool luscious licorice treat with the spice's exotic and distinctive aroma nestled snugly against a velvety smooth and creamy ice cream. Yummilicious!

Chocolatey Chocolate Ice Cream

Yum, yum, yum, my favorite flavor of ice cream!  Chocolatey chocolate!  No matter how many new and exotic flavors appear on my ice cream horizon, I always float back lazily to that rich, velvetly, creamy, uniquely chocolatey taste of chocolate ice cream.  (Well, that, and also my other classic childhood favorite ice cream, Strawberry Ice Cream!) 

We always like to have some homemade ice cream in the fridge and this Chocolatey Chocolate Ice Cream 巧克力雪糕 is a great favorite of ours for eating and for dressing up to make fancy ice cream cones!

Strawberry Ice Cream

There's nothing like strawberry and cream.  It's truly a combination made in heaven.   Nowadays we get luscious ripe strawberries in the middle of the summer thanks to modern farming technology so what the heck, gotta take advantage! We chanced upon a bonanza of sun ripened long stemmed strawberries and swopped them all up.  Whoopee!  What a grab!  

Just the thing to make one of our favorite homemade fruit ice creams, the absolutely delectable classic known as Strawberry Ice Cream 士多啤梨雪糕.  I know, I know, everyone's had strawberry ice cream a million times already.  But trust me, you haven't had strawberry ice cream until you've made some fresh for yourself at home!

Passion Fruit Ice Cream

Passion... Fruit... Put those two words together and what do you visualize?  Something gorgeous and sexy and exotic, no doubt.  But in actuality the real passion fruit is a plain 'ol thing: round, dull purple, wrinkled, ugly even.  Well, at least till you take pity on the poor 'ol ugly thing and open it up.  And then it clicks...that gorgeous lusciously goopy yellow orange flesh with its perfectly black oval seeds... Yes passion, yes fruit...  Yeah for the gorgeously sexy insides of the Passion Fruit!  

And then you scoop a mouthful, bite in...and your face puckers.  Yikes!  It turns out that passion fruit tastes sour sweet. This makes it the perfect fruit to make a summery, refreshing to the palate ice cream!  Just add a generous bit of sugar to balance the sour and you have the makings for Passion Fruit Ice Cream, a seductive dessert that is fantastically tasty and refreshing after a summery meal.  Plus gorgeous to look at!

Crushed M&Ms Vanilla Ice Cream

One of the strangest things, I think, is how enjoyable ice cream is in the dead of winter.  How freezing your body inside and outside can bring joy and fulfillment is something that I cannot begin to figure out.  But I know it is true.  And not just myself either.  I see people greedily and happily eating ice cream in the cold of winter all the time.

So, in celebration of ice creams in winter, we made an ice cream with one of our favorite winter flavors, vanilla, and some M&M's, a winter favorite because they remind us of Christmas and Chinese New Year with all their bright lovely sparkily colors.  So if you're a winter ice cream eater like us, try indulging yourself with our super delicious M&M's Vanilla Ice Cream!

Mango Ice Cream

Everyone loves mango.  Even people who are allergic to mango love mango.  Like my mom, who's allergic just to the skin of the mango (kinda weird, but that's what she claims).  She actually makes me peel the mango for her and feed it to her by hand.  Apparently, these extra steps allow her to be released from the allergy towards the mango.  Can you see the lengths that mango lovers will go to?  It's just plain crazy with diced mango sprinkled on top!

But than again, I can totally understand why. Golden and oh so very fragrant!  Sweet with just a touch of sweet sourness, an almost crunchy yet slippery mouth feel, there is nothing like the mango.  Mango is the Queen of fruits.  And how can one possibly resist a queen at the top of her game?

So the other day when I saw a beautiful Taiwan golden mango at the market I was irresistibly pulled into buying it. And naturally after that we made delicious homemade Mango Ice Cream with it.  Ah...these summer fruit ice creams!  They are the reason that I can love the summer...

Black Sesame Ice Cream 黑芝麻雪糕

The summer's coming and it's time for lots of ice cream!  We tried a recipe for black sesame ice cream that is just out of this world delicious!  It seems even to have supplanted our blueberry ice cream as the family's favorite ice cream flavor.

I think the reason it is so good is that you make the black sesame paste yourself.  We tried this before, roasting and then grinding our own black sesame for Black Sesame Tang Yuan 黑芝麻湯圓 that came out fantastic.  The black sesame is so fragrant this way!  Nothing that you buy or that you get when eating out can compare to it.  Well,  here is something just as yummy with this freshly made paste - the fabulous Black Sesame Ice cream!

Blueberry Ice Cream | No Machine Needed

Now that the long hot summer is finally hitting Hong Kong hard, it is a perfect opportunity to make lots of ice cream!  What could be better on a hot day than a tasty, sugary, icily cool and smooth homemade ice cream?  Especially, if you ask me, if that ice cream is fruit based.  There's something about the sweet/sour nature of fruit that makes anything fruity to be so refreshing.  

Recently we have tried blueberry ice cream and really, really liked it.  It was easy to make, didn't need egg yolks and was super duper tasty and the most beautiful hue of violet that you have ever seen.  I really like food that looks really amazingly beautiful naturally.  It just looked too gorgeous to eat, really, but what the hey, we ate all of it in a day or so!

Durian Ice Cream - No Machine Needed 榴蓮雪糕

Hard on the heels of our Durian Taste Test, I decided to make 榴槤雪糕, or durian ice cream, with the leftovers of this fruit known as the King of Fruits. I had never made nor tasted durian ice cream so I was very curious to see how this would turn out.  In concept it seemed a perfect match, given the creamy and sweet nature of the durian and the cold creamy sweet character of ice cream.

The only thing was that there was not that much durian left over after my daughter and I had munched on it that first day I brought it home; the 熱氣, or heat to the body, from the fruit causing me an slight outbreak of my ezcema and my little daughter to have her very first wee pimple, right in the middle of her perfect little nose.

Cherry Frozen Yogurt - No Machine Needed

Making our own ice cream, or frozen yogurt to be precise, for the first time was a revelation. Luscious, creamy, bursting with flavor, tasting of, gasp!, sun-ripened fruit, it was something to long achingly for on lazy summer days. And all this without an ice cream machine!