Over the past year, my wife has been experimenting with making homemade chai tea. It’s impressive to watch her dedication to the trial and error nature of the project. She’s tried many different recipes and approaches, constantly tweaking things in search of the perfect result. It’s something I’ve come to realize in writing this blog: perfecting a recipe requires many repeated efforts and many, many failures.
But unlike my wife, I only have the attention for one or two gos at any given flavor / recipe. Given that I know this about myself, when I decided to make chai ice cream, I immediately decided to forego any attempts at trying to make my own chai. Instead, I reached for the Chai Masala blend (pictured above) that I got my wife as a Christmas gift this past year. A real chipmunk gift if ever there was one!
Anyway, the recipe this week is basically the Salt & Straw base recipe with a scoop of chai masala added into it. As I mentioned last week, running the ice cream tournament has taken up a lot of time and bandwidth, forcing me to keep things simple.
Now I’ve recounted the Salt & Straw process enough times that faithful readers of the blog won’t need another rundown. So here it is in pictures. It’s not completely sequential, but you’ll get the gist.











I let it sit in the fridge for about 12 hours before churning.
Here’s the set up pre-transfer…working on my artisinal vibes.
And here are the final results!
Overall, this came out quite good. The Salt & Straw base feels foolproof at this point, and the chai masala flavor here was quite nice: fragrant and well balanced with the creaminess of the base.
However, the one thing this ice cream needs…
…is more chai masala.
Seriously though, I used one tablespoon of the Chai Masala blend, and I think another half tablespoon or more would have been warranted here. The chai masala flavor was good, but could have, in my opinion, been stronger.
Well, that’s all for this installment. Stay tuned for the results of Round 2 of the Tournament, coming tomorrow!