Matcha Mango Lassi Frozen Yogurt recipe

I did both mango ice cream and mango frozen yogurt earlier this summer. Now that summer is almost officially over, I think I’ll spend some more time revisiting earlier flavors and maybe tweaking them too. In that vein, today I made Mango Lassi Frozen Yogurt – following Jeni’s methods – and decided to add matcha to the mix. The ingredients pretty much echo my daily breakfast protein smoothie with the exception of the protein powder itself!

In Jeni’s method (Jeni Britton Bauer of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams), you use regular, unflavored yogurt but you drain it first, like Greek yogurt or yogurt cheese. I bought something called flour sacks at World Market that were perfect for this – a tighter weave than regular cheesecloth but not quite as tight a weave as a regular tea towel, although they are really big. I also got a couple of their cute little colanders, cuz you can’t have too many of those, right? And the colander was just the right size for one quart of yogurt. Her recipe calls for lowfat yogurt, but I splurged and used the whole milk instead. This process needs to happen at least 8 hours ahead of time, so it requires a little more planning – of course, if you’re using an ice cream maker that requires a bowl to be frozen for 24 hours, you are probably already planning ahead. Unless you just keep in the freezer always, just in case, which is smart.

You can’t really see my cute tiny colander sitting on top of a yogurt container, but you can see the flour sack towel – I doubled it for the draining, mainly because the cloth is huge. I could just cut it, but one thing I like is that it’s hemmed so it washes easily without fraying. I made a mistake (a sort of brain typo) and misread the quantity of yogurt, which should have been 1 1/4 cups but I pulled out 1 1/2 cups, leaving about 1 cup of drained yogurt for eating or making cheese or something. I think it made the final product a little harder to freeze, and I had to add 10 minutes of freezing time.

Here’s the final recipe:

Print Recipe

Match Mango Lassi Frozen Yogurt

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading...

Ingredients

• 1 quart yogurt (I used whole milk, although her recipe calls for lowfat)
• 1 cup frozen mango cubes
• 1/4 cup sugar for the mango puree
• 4 ounces (2 tablespoons) cream cheese, softened
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 tablespoon matcha powder
• 1 teaspoon cardamom
• 1 1/2 cups whole milk
• 2/3 cups heavy cream
• 1/3 cup light corn syrup
• 2/3 cup sugar

Instructions

1

Drain the yogurt for at least 8 hours, using cheesecloth or a tea towel in a colander, in the refrigerator

2

Reserve 1 1/4 cups of the drained yogurt for this recipe

3

Puree the mango

4

Boil mango and sugar to make the puree; set aside to cool

5

Put the softened cream cheese in a heat-proof bowl

6

Whisk the cornstarch, matcha powder and cardamom together to remove any lumps

7

Add about 2 tablespoons of the milk to the powders to create a slurry - whisk until smooth

8

Boil the rest of the milk with the cream, sugar and corn syrup for 4 minutes

9

Remove the milk/sugars from heat and add the cornstarch slurry, whisking it in

10

Return to heat and boil until thickened - this took a couple of minutes

11

Strain the milk/sugar/powders over the softened cream cheese, whisk to incorporate

12

Add the yogurt and mango puree, whisk to completely incorporate

13

Pour base into a ziplock bag and put in an ice bath to chill in 30 minutes; or pour into a container and put in fridge for a few hours - it's easier to freeze when the base is really cold

14

Freeze in your ice cream machine - it took mine 40 minutes

Notes

I was surprised at how much matcha powder was strained out - it was like it reformed into tea leaves or something! I might increase the matcha to 1 1/2 or even 2 tablespoons to get more of the flavor.
I did not fully puree the mango, so there are some small mango bits in it - you could either puree it more and/or strain again if you want to remove the mango bits.

I started with 30 minutes in my machine, but that wasn’t enough so I added 10 minutes at the end. Because I had 1/4 cup too much yogurt, the base was also a little too much volume for the bucket. I think I need to mark my bucket somehow so I don’t put too much base in. The air churned in made it go right to the top of the bucket in 40 minutes, but the texture was about right at that point – soft serve. The flavor is excellent, just like my morning smoothies! Well, I don’t have that much sugar in the smoothie – and I don’t have heavy cream and whole milk either. OK, it’s reminiscent of my smoothie.

It looks a little like guacamole…