Ice Cream Class

Matthew Woolen is a master pastry chef and has worked in a variety of Seattle restaurants, including gastropub Old Sage, Zhu Dang, and a gluten-free restaurant called Capitol Cider.

Matthew Woolen

Coffee ice cream—rich, creamy, with a robust coffee flavor and a little caffeine kick—is one of the best ice cream flavors out there. It’s also a really good way to use up leftover lattes.Leftover lattes? I don’t mean the dregs of lattes left around a coffee shop. I mean all the lattes you’ve made as you’ve <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/latte-art">practiced and perfected making latte art like a pro barista</a>. Like anything worth doing well, making latte art takes practice—lots and lots of practice. And unless you’re drinking 10,000 practice lattes, which we don’t recommend, using them to make coffee ice cream is a delicious way to cut down on waste.Making a good ice cream comes down to making a good ice cream base. It needs to have the correct sugar-to-dairy ratio so that <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ice-cream-geekery?context=ice-cream">it freezes properly and forms small ice crystals</a> that contribute to a smooth and creamy mouthfeel. For this ice cream, I include egg yolks for richness and the custardy flavor they provide, but whenever you add egg yolks to an ice cream base, you need to temper them by bringing them up to at least [f 180]. You can do this in a pot or a <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/vanilla-bean-ice-cream">sous vide water bath</a>, but a quick and efficient way to bring the temperature of the base up to [f 180] is to just let it run in a blender on high speed for a few minutes. If you choose not to use eggs, you can forgo the tempering step and just blend the ice cream base together without running the motor.Once the ice cream base is blended, it needs to be chilled to [f 40] or below, before it can be churned. You can set the base in the refrigerator (make sure your refrigerator is set to below [f 40]), or you can use an ice bath to quickly chill it. Once chilled, churn the base up using an ice cream maker or liquid nitrogen/dry ice and a stand mixer, and then transfer it to a lidded container and place it in the freezer to harden further.

Leftover Latte Ice Cream