Black sesame ice cream

An ash-grey ice cream with a deep roasted flavour, closer to tahini than to a nut butter. A standard flavour in Japan, a surprise here.

Half the pleasure is the colour: the ice cream is almost slate grey, and the flavour is unexpectedly serious — roasted, faintly bitter, with none of the sweet "nutty" lift. Black sesame paste is roughly half fat and another quarter non-sweet solids, so this recipe had to be built as a cream ice cream rather than a gelato: sesame brings plenty of solids but no sugar, and the PAC would never reach the gelato range.

Type: Classic cream ice cream · Servings: 8 · Difficulty: Moderate

Equipment

Ingredients

  • 520 g whole milk 3.5 %
  • 200 g whipping cream 33 %
  • 35 g skimmed milk powder
  • 90 g black sesame paste 100 % (100 % roasted black sesame paste (kurogoma))
  • 120 g granulated sugar (sucrose)
  • 35 g dextrose (glucose powder)
  • 1 g salt

Making the mix

  1. Pour the milk, cream and milk powder into a pan and heat while stirring. At about 40 °C add the granulated sugar, dextrose and salt and stir until dissolved.
  2. Heat the mix to 85 °C and hold it there for 1–2 minutes, stirring constantly.
  3. Put the sesame paste in a tall jug and pour the hot mix onto it a little at a time while running a stick blender. Blend until everything is an even grey with no lumps.
  4. Stand the jug in iced water and cool the mix below 5 °C.
  5. Cover and age in the fridge for 4–12 hours. Blend it briefly once more before churning — sesame fat tends to rise to the surface.

Method — Compressor ice cream maker

  1. Switch the ice cream maker on 5–10 minutes in advance so the bowl can pre-chill.
  2. Give the aged mix a quick blitz with a stick blender and pour it into the bowl, no higher than the fill line. Churn for 30–40 minutes, until it thickens and clings to the paddle.
  3. Transfer to a chilled tub, press cling film onto the surface and leave to harden in the freezer for 2 hours.

Total time: 8 h 34 min

Method — Freezer-bowl ice cream maker

  1. Take the bowl, frozen for at least 24 hours, out of the freezer just before use, fit the paddle and switch the machine on.
  2. With the machine running, pour in the well-chilled, freshly blended mix — filling the bowl no more than two-thirds.
  3. Churn for 20–30 minutes, until the mix thickens to a soft cream. There is no point going longer — by then the bowl has warmed up.
  4. Transfer to a chilled tub, cover with cling film and leave to harden in the freezer for 3 hours.

A freezer bowl only partly freezes the mix, so the ice cream takes longer to harden and tends to be slightly less smooth than from a compressor machine. A thoroughly chilled, properly aged mix helps.

Total time: 9 h 24 min

Method — Ninja CREAMi and similar machines

  1. Pour the chilled mix into a CREAMi tub up to the MAX line, put the lid on and freeze it level for 24 hours.
  2. Put the tub in the machine and run the Ice Cream program.
  3. If the result is crumbly, add a tablespoon of milk and run Re-spin.

Programme: Ice Cream

Total time: 30 h 4 min

Stages

Preparation
15 min
Cooking
14 min
Cooling
30 min
Ageing in the fridge
5 h
Churning
35 min
Hardening in the freezer
2 h
Total time
8 h 34 min

Plan: what to do and when

The whole recipe takes 8 h 34 min, of which 29 min is hands-on — the rest is waiting you can spend elsewhere.

The making itself fits into a single day — start at least 8 h 34 min before serving.

  • Prepare the mix (weigh and stir the ingredients) — 15 min
  • Cook the mix — 14 min
  • Cool the mix down — 30 min
  • Let the mix age in the fridge — 5 h
  • Churn in the machine — 35 min
  • Let it harden in the freezer — 2 h

Serving and storage

Serve it with something sweet and simple to balance the bitter notes: a spoonful of honey, a scoop of sweet anko bean paste, or alongside a scoop of matcha ice cream. It also makes an excellent mochi filling. Let it stand for 5–10 minutes out of the freezer (−18 °C) until it scoops easily.

In a sealed tub with cling film pressed onto the surface it is best within a week; after that ice crystals build up.

Tips

  • If you can only find whole black sesame seeds, toast 90 g in a dry pan and grind them to a paste in a mortar or a powerful blender with a spoonful of the mix. The flavour will be even stronger.
  • White sesame (tahini) works in this recipe too, but the flavour is gentler and the ice cream stays beige.
  • Sesame is an allergen — tell your guests, because the colour gives nothing away.

Why it works

Ninety grams of sesame paste bring about 46 g of fat and nearly 38 g of non-sweet solids (protein, fibre, starch) — and zero grams of sugar. Total solids jump to 41.6 %, but the PAC stays at 23.5, well below the gelato floor of 24. That is why the recipe is written as a cream ice cream, where the PAC range is 19–30, and why it contains 35 g of dextrose: without it the ice cream would come out of the freezer rock hard. For an even softer scoop, swap another 20 g of granulated sugar for dextrose — sweetness drops only a little, PAC rises noticeably.

Related recipes

  • Matcha mochi

    Green mochi filled with matcha ice cream — slightly bitter green tea balances the sweet rice dough.

  • Matcha frozen yogurt

    Green frozen yogurt with matcha — gently bitter, refreshing and lighter than cream-based matcha ice cream.

  • Miso caramel ice cream

    Dark caramel rounded out with white miso and a splash of soy sauce. The salt arrives fermented — deeper and longer than salt on its own.

How we calculate the composition · What PAC and POD mean · Balance this mix in the calculator

Sources