Honey is our ingredient of the season, you can find our archive of honey posts here.
For how easy it is to do, I don’t make homemade ice cream enough. I’m blaming it on all of the good ice cream shops in town… and the forethought required to put the ice cream maker in the freezer.
This flavor combination might not be for everyone, but I think it’s a delicious and unique treat that is perfect for a mid-summer gathering. *And please read to the end, you’ll enjoy our first experience tasting lavender honey ice cream in a local shop.
Lavender Honey Ice Cream
There are a couple of factors that will influence the final flavor of the ice cream. First is the honey. I used a dark honey from our brother that has a nice, rich flavor, more intense than a generic store-bought honey. Those lighter wildflower blends will give you a more subtle honey flavor. The intensity of the lavender flavor will be determined by how long you steep it. I followed the recipe’s suggested 30 minutes, but if you’d like a lighter flavor, then start with a shorter steeping time see what you think of the cream’s flavor.
Ingredients
- 2 cups heavy whipping cream
- 1 cup half and half
- 2/3 cup honey
- 2 Tbsp dried lavender flowers
- 2 eggs
- 1/8 tsp salt
How-to
- Heat the heavy cream, half and half, honey, and lavender flowers in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat until it just start to bubble. Remove from the heat, cover with a lid, and let it steep for 30 minutes.
- Strain the cream mixture using a fine mesh sieve. Clean the saucepan, return the cream mixture to the pan, and heat over medium high heat until hot.
- While the cream mixture is warming up, whisk the two eggs in a large bowl. Slowly pour a thin stream of hot cream into the eggs, whisking the entire time. This will temper the eggs.
- Once you’ve added about 1 cup of hot cream to the eggs, you can pour the entire egg mixture into the saucepan with the remaining cream. Continue cooking over medium low heat and stirring constantly until the custard has thickened and coats the back of a wooden spoon.
- Pour the custard through a fine-mesh sieve. Let it cool slightly and then gently place a piece of plastic wrap on the top of the custard; touching the custard in order to stop a skin from forming.
- Cool completely in the fridge for at least 3+ hours.
- Freeze the custard in an ice cream maker according the the manufacturer’s instructions (it will likely take about 20 minutes).
- Transfer to a container and place in the freezer until firm. This also helps the flavors develop.
Enjoy! I like serving this with a drizzle of honey and just a couple of lavender buds. The texture of dried lavender isn’t for everyone, but a couple of buds with the ice cream and drizzled honey adds a fun crunchy/chewing texture. But don’t go overboard. This is a novelty texture that your guests will only appreciate in one or two bites.
*Funny story: Calder usually scoffs at anything lavender-flavored, but a great ice cream shop in our neighborhood made lavender honey ice cream. They always have unique flavors, and we’ve never had anything bad. So, Calder orders some. He’s eating the ice cream, not letting on that anything funny is going on, and then asks me if I want a bite. I do, and then he gives me a warning: “watch out for the lavender flowers, at first I thought that they were bits of paper towel, but after a few bites I realized what they were.” Readers, he thought that he was EATING PAPER TOWEL, but kept going because the flavor was that good! omg