Scoop Kitchen
Mint comes in two forms on Scoop Kitchen. Fresh leaves, steeped in warm cream for 30 minutes and strained out, give mint chocolate chip a clean, fresh taste without the grassy flavor or green color that blending brings. Peppermint extract is quicker: half a teaspoon flavors a whole tubpint, with no cooking.
Use peppermint extract, not mint extract, which contains spearmint and tastes like chewing gum. Extracts vary in strength, so add half, taste the base and add more if you want it stronger. The classic pale green comes from a drop or two of food coloring, or from a few spinach leaves blended into a protein tubpint.
In frozen drinks, the mint is bruised or blended briefly with the sugar and strained out, and in fruit sorbets a few leaves are blended right in. For a mint syrup, use only the leaves and blend for 30 seconds at most, because stems and long blending turn it bitter.
Recipes with mint
11 recipes
Questions people ask
Fresh mint or peppermint extract?
Fresh leaves steeped in cream taste cleaner and fresher, and extract is quicker and needs no cooking. Both work in mint chocolate chip.
Why does my mint ice cream taste like gum?
It was made with mint extract, which contains spearmint, instead of peppermint, or with too much extract. Start with half the amount and taste.
How do I make mint ice cream green?
Add 1 to 2 drops of green food coloring with the extract, or blend in a few spinach leaves. Steeped fresh mint stays pale.