Stra-chai-tella ice cream

Complaining about the weather won’t change the weather or my feelings about the seemingly endless January we have had so far this year. We are nearing May 1. and it has been snowing, albeit very light, raining and just a bone chillingly cold spring.

So to say I have been craving comfort food to lighten the mood would be a massive understatement! Now I can - and happily do - eat ice cream all year round, it is not an inherently summery dessert for me. It is just the flavours that changes with the seasons, and the weather. Typically around this time my mind would be filled with daydreams of rhubarb sorbets, lemon & almond gelato, cherry blossom ice cream - something light and fresh to reflect the warmer days of late spring. This year? So far all I have been wanting has been heavy hitters like chocolate or nutty ice creams.

That is, until I was gifted a beautiful tin of chai masala and I knew immediately that I wanted to make a chai ice cream. But not “just” a chai ice cream, though that is a thing of beauty melting slowly on top of a rhubarb crumble, a stra-chai-tella (I had to make it just for the name alone!) ice cream with flecks of salted milk chocolate.

The creamy toffee notes of the milk chocolate are just beautiful with the sweet, spicy flavour of the chai spices.