After several months of ice cream maker-less living, which resulted from the breakage of my lame old Krups machine, I returned to the wonderful world of ice cream making this weekend when I broke in my new KitchenAid ice cream maker attachment for my stand mixer.  With its $70 price tag, the thing should work well and it does.  If you've got a KitchenAid stand mixer and you're in the market for an ice cream maker, check this one out.

I broke in my new ice cream maker with this recipe for green tea and ginger ice cream from my favorite ice cream blog, Ice Cream Ireland.  The occasion was an Olympics-watching party at a friend's house.  We all made Chinese-inspired dishes and gorged ourselves while awaiting Michael Phelp's second gold medal performance of these 2008 games in what would prove to be the best race I've ever seen.  Phelps and his three teammates were underdogs to the smack-talking French team in the 4x100m freestyle relay, one member of which assured the world it would "smash" team USA in the event.  Team USA's come from behind win in the final meter made the race an instant classic.

But this post is about ice cream . . . and Ice Cream Ireland's recipe for green tea and ginger ice cream is damn good.  I learned from reading and then making this recipe that green tea ice cream that's actually green is colored by matcha—i.e., green tea powder—not by the process of infusing the custard with green tea, which doesn't impart much color to the custard.  The recipe I used relies on the infusion process, not matcha, for the green tea flavor.  So it's not green, but it has a delicious and subtle green tea flavor.  The crystallized ginger adds not only great ginger flavor, but also a nice texture contrast . . . little chewy flavor blasts in every bite.  I'll be adding this recipe to my ice cream rotation and will be heading back to the Ice Cream Ireland blog again soon for some more recipes.