When the summer heat gets too much for the comforts of a warm cup of roasty, toasty genmaicha, churn it into creamy ice cream!

If you follow along with me on Instagram, then you may have already seen this recipe I shared a few weeks ago (scroll through this Highlight). I figured it’s worth documenting here on the blog as well, since July is National Ice Cream Month - and this Sunday (July 19) is National Ice Cream Day!

As soon as June rolled around, I couldn’t get ice cream off my brain - summer was upon us, but I was craving the comforts of a toasty cup of tea. That’s when the light bulb went off in my head - why not make a tea-infused ice cream?

The flavor that immediately came to mind was genmaicha and honey. I’ve guzzled countless cups of this roasty, nutty tea throughout recent winters - the toasted popped brown rice mixed with green tea is so just comforting. Add a splash of oat milk and honey and I’m off to dreamland. ;)

Originally, I planned to add honeycomb candy to the ice cream but I ended up burning the batch I made. 😬 Which is just as well, because the ice cream was plenty sweet. Instead, I made mochi (in the microwave!), and cut them up into bite-sized pieces to add as a topping. The unsweetened, chewy mochi was the perfect complement to the roasty, creamy ice cream!

RECIPES*:

Genmaicha Ice Cream - I used 3 cups of half-and-half instead of heavy cream, and substituted the corn syrup with honey.

Mochi - Check out Koda Farms for the easy mochi recipe - all you need is their mochiko (sweet rice flour) and water!

*Disclaimer: At times, I’ll just include links to the recipes used as I enjoy the food/photo-making process more than the recipe-testing/writing process.. As a former baking blogger, I’m aware of how much time, effort, and money (all those ingredients!) it takes to create a recipe from scratch and call it your own. I’ll be sure to mention any adjustments/changes I made to the original recipes. Thanks for understanding!