#13 Roasted Black Sesame Seed

My awesome colleague Stacie used to make a special ice cream cake for my birthday every year. Layer one: Brownies. Layer two: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream. Layer Three: Mint Chocolate Chip Ice cream. Delicious. The leftovers would only last for two to three days, which made it seem like my birthday just kept going. Thanks, Stacie, for those wonderful ice cream cakes!

Her birthday was last week, so I decided to make a special ice cream for the occasion. Her favorite flavors of ice cream are: Pistachio Almond, Black Sesame, and Azuki Bean. I went with the black sesame because it sounded the most intriguing.

After perusing a few random recipes on the web, I knew what I had to do. I had to use a lot of black sesames to impart the black sesame flavor. Most recipes out there called for 2-3 tablespoons but that just didn't seem like enough...

So I roasted a 1/2 cup of black sesame seeds at 325 degrees for 15 minutes. Roasting the seeds helps to release their flavor. Then I began preparing the basic ice cream recipe, although this time I substituted 1% milk for the whole milk. I also added a 1/4 tsp of vanilla extract. Next I chopped about half of the roasted black sesame seeds with the mini food processor / spice chopper. That didn't seem to work too well, so the next half of the black sesame seeds were ground up the old fashion way - using a mortar and pestle. Crushing the sesame seeds by hand was much more effective. Plus a mortar and pestle is just a neat addition to any kitchen. (Go get one!)

Anyway, I added the first half of chopped seeds to the ice cream mixture while it was on the stove. Once I was done whisking the mixture I put it in the freezer to rapidly chill, then I moved it to the refrigerator for a couple of hours until I was ready to churn it in the machine.

When it came time to make the ice cream, I strained the mixture to remove the soggy black sesame seed pulp before I poured it into the ice cream maker. As the mixture was nearly finished churning and freezing I added the other half of ground black sesame seeds as a mix-in. My theory is that the mixture siphoned all the flavor out of the black sesame seeds. So by adding a freshly ground batch toward the end of the freezing process there would be more flavor and more crunch to the ice cream.

The outcome was very "cookies n' cream" as you can see!

The flavor of this ice cream is rather nutty - most likely because this ice cream is a bit out there (but in a good way)! Luckily, the last flavor that lingers on your tongue after each bite is the sesame flavor. The cookies n' cream-like composition almost makes you think you're eating a cookies n' cream ice cream at first, but the crunch and flavor of the sesame seeds quickly makes you realize that this ice cream is in fact something else entirely. It went over very well with my coworkers. To emphasize the flavor I added a sprinkling of whole black sesame seeds to the top of the ice cream. Voila!

Thanks for inspiring this ice cream, Stacie!