Basil Ice Cream

Continuing my exploration of Dana Cree’s ice cream book, we hosted a small dinner for a few parents from my son’s class that we’re close with. To make an interesting flavour of ice cream, I turned towards the plants growing in our indoor garden.

The Click & Grow was a gift from my wife a few years ago. Recently, I restocked the seed pods and bought a mix of basils: regular (Genovese), cinnamon, and Thai. When I read the headnote of the cinnamon basil ice cream recipe in the book, Hello, My Name Is Ice Cream, I realized that the author calls for cinnamon basil if you can get it, with a substitute being regular basil and a cinnamon stick.

Since I didn’t have 25g of cinnamon basil, I decided to experiment with a leafy blend from all three varieties, supplemented by another regular basil plant I have growing in a windowsill. Per Cree’s instructions, I also included the stems. The suggested infusion time was short, only 30 minutes (I did 60). Again, I used tapioca starch as the texture agent.

This ice cream is 🔥. The flavour was not immediately identifiable to most of the tasters, and hinted at something vegetal. It was addictive though, with everyone coming back for more. I really liked this ice cream. It bounces between savoury and sweet in your mind. Highly recommended.