Some of you might have read it in @KarenVChinIce-cream lover recap but I love making homemade ice cream. For me, it’s a way to give a new life to too riped fruits and some of my favourites zero wasted recipes include ice cream and sherbet.
I’ve received a book a few years ago: Scoop Adventures The best ice cream of the 50 states. One ice cream particularly caught my eyes, it was made by The Hop Ice Cream Cafe, in Asheville, North Carolina. Mind you, I’ve never been there, but I decided to make a copycat version of that ice cream to try it. I just happened to have kale in my fridge, so why not?
Kale Ice Cream Recipe
The base for this ice cream is a homemade custard. In order to make the custard, you’ll need to whisk 5 egg yolk with 1/4 cup (50g) of sugar, until the color gets paler. Then, in a saucepan, you’ll heat slowly 2 cups (475ml) of heavy cream, 1/2 cup (100g) of sugar, 3/4 cup (175 ml) of milk. When the sugar is fully dissolved, wait for an additional 3 to 4 minutes. Pour a bit of the heated mixture with the egg to warm them without cooking them. If you heat the egg yolk too fast, you’ll get clumps in your custard. You can then put the heated egg yolk mixture with the rest of the recipe in the saucepan and heat it until it thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Put it aside to cool down and chill it in your fridge for at least 4 hours.
You can now add kale to your ice cream. You’ll need 2oz (56g) of kale, chopped into fine pieces, 1cup (235 ml)of the cold custard, 3 1/2 teaspoons (42g) of sugar, 2 1/2 teaspoon (12 ml) lemon juice and 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest. You blend it until it gives a smooth purée. After that, you can mix it with the rest of the custard and you’re ready to churn your ice cream.
To give it a sweeter taste, you can now add a blueberry swirl. Simply blend 1/2 cup (96g) of fresh blueberry with 4 teaspoons (16 g) of sugar and voilà!
I hope you’ll be able to enjoy this copycat recipe as much as myself. It’s not an everyday ice cream but it’s nice to try something else once in a while. Bonus, my kids will eat kale without even knowing it
Thank you for sharing these delicious photos and recipe with us!
Personally, I’ve tried to prepare Ice-cream at home, but I wasn’t really satisfied from the result. My ice-cream didn’t really freeze and it stayed more like a cream. I guess, I missed an ingredient!
Was there a particular taste and flavor that was much more difficult to prepare than others?
@Wei929 I know. I’m also a kale lover (thus the reason I had it in my fridge) but I wouldn’t have thought to combine it with something sweet. The result was quite good Hopefully, one day you’ll be able to taste one.
@BorrisS if ice cream is too runny, it might be because you haven’t reduced enough your base. If that’s the case, then you can always add powder milk to help thicken it. Another reason might because your ice cream isn’t cold enough when you put it in the bowl before churning it. Just know that no matter which kind of ice cream maker you have, the homemade ice cream will melt faster than store-bought because there is less air in it. Also, when you’ve finished churning it, it’s usually the consistency of soft served ice cream. You’ll have to put it in a freezer to get harder ice cream.
As for your questions, I find ice cream a bit harder to make simply because they have more steps than a sherbet (in which I can basically just mix the fruit with sugar). One that involves a lot of different steps was a chocolate and porter beer ice cream. It was delicious, but I had to stops several times during the recipe to let it chill before doing the next step.
@Melissa_Langlois I guess adding healthy vegetable in ice cream is an innovative way to eat more veggies this looks great thanks for sharing the recipe.
I still laugh when I think about Kale in ice cream! In your ice cream cookbook, is there a garlic ice cream recipe? Past San Jose, CA (where Connect Live 2019 was at), there is a town called Gilroy, CA. They are famously known to be the: “Garlic Captial of the World.” However, these days “US” garlic is heavily imported from China.
@KarenVChin in my book I found one ice cream recipe using garlic, but it’s a Chipotle Raspberry ice cream from the Ice Cream Cafe in Gillette, Wyoming.
But after looking up on the Internet, I’ve found a recipe for the Gilroy Garlic ice cream. I’ll be sure to try it this summer
but I can’t image kale in the ice cream 
this looks great thanks for sharing the recipe.
But there are more healthy option when making ice cream, like starting them with frozen banana.