Make your own green tea ice cream from
vanilla. Photo © Subsociety | Dreamstime.

Green tea ice cream is one of our favorite flavors, although we rarely come across it outside of Asian restaurants. Ciao Bella Gelato sells it in pints, but it’s not easy to find.

In the absence of ready-made green tea ice cream, we make a quickie version by softening a pint of vanilla ice cream and mixing in matcha green tea powder:

1. Add two tablespoons of matcha, blend thoroughly and taste.
2. If you want a more vivid green tea flavor, add an additional half-tablespoon (1-1/2 teaspoons).

Matcha, which literally means “powdered tea,” is a flour-fine, chlorophyll-green tea powder made from the finest young leaves from spring’s first tea harvest. It is the tea used in the famed Japanese tea ceremony, cha no yu, where it is whipped into a froth in a ceramic bowl with a bamboo whisk.

Matcha is also used in recipes with green tea flavor—ice cream, cake, other baked good, tiramisu, green tea lattes and smoothies and more. Here’s a website with an extensive selection of green tea recipes for every course.

Here’s a recipe to make green tea ice cream from scratch.

Find more recipes and reviews of our favorite ice cream brands in THE NIBBLE’S Ice Cream Section.