Comments on: Caffeinated ice cream?

Question: Caffeinated ice cream?

Rash — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:42:05 -0800

Is there any caffeine in coffee ice cream? (Wouldn't be anything like one scoop = one cuo of coffee?) How about green tea ice cream?

By: Pax

Pax — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:47:36 -0800

I'm not sure, but I am very sensitive to caffeine (triggers my migraines) and I swear some coffee ice cream kept me up a few months ago.

By: Think_Long

Think_Long — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:53:57 -0800

yes, just google the nutrition info for the brand
For example:
serving size caffeine (mg)
Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch 8 fl. oz. 84
Ben & Jerry's Coffee Flavored Ice Cream 8 fl. oz. 68
Haagen-Dazs Coffee Ice Cream 8 fl. oz. 58
Haagen-Dazs Coffee Light Ice Cream 8 fl. oz. 58
Haagen-Dazs Coffee Frozen Yogurt 8 fl. oz. 58
Haagen-Dazs Coffee & Almond Crunch Bar 8 fl. oz. 58
Starbucks Coffee Ice Cream 8 fl. oz. 50-60

By: Rash

Rash — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:07:27 -0800

Wow that's higher'n I expected, about one cup of coffee ice = 1/2 cup coffee!

> I swear some coffee ice cream kept me up a few months ago.

Marketing opportunity: Decaf ice cream!

However, I don't know anybody who willfully chooses coffee at the ice cream parlor (although I bet it's used in certain drinks), yet I heard somewhere it's the fourth most popular flavor in the US after strawberry, chocolate and overwhelmingly #1, Vanilla.

By: _dario

_dario — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:22:08 -0800

I find the actual caffeine in coffee ice cream to be negligible (unless you're really sensitive) - a glass of coffee granita, on the other hand, packs quite the punch.

By: Think_Long

Think_Long — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:28:03 -0800

i think coffee is a harder flavor to get right. haagen dazs has a pretty nice and custardy version, but the caribou-bryers blend is far too bitter. I'm with the rest of America though, vanilla is #1 always

By: 2oh1

2oh1 — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:37:00 -0800

Holy moly! I love coffee ice cream too, and it never occurred to me that there was caffein in it! Now I feel silly. Coffee ice cream recipes obviously have coffee as an ingredient. Did I mention how much I love coffee ice cream?

Of course, it's not the caffein that keeps me up. It's the ignorantly huge portion of ice cream I heap for myself. [bad habit!! bad habit!!]

By: TungstenChef

TungstenChef — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:23:32 -0800

I find the actual caffeine in coffee ice cream to be negligible (unless you're really sensitive) - a glass of coffee granita, on the other hand, packs quite the punch.

That's probably because of all the fat in the ice cream. Most drugs are absorbed in the intestines, and fatty food seriously slows down how fast your stomach releases its contents. It's the same principal as eating fatty foods after a night of drinking to "soak up the alcohol." It doesn't really soak it up, it just keeps it in your stomach longer so you absorb it more slowly.

By: tresbizzare

tresbizzare — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 01:52:49 -0800

When the dairy purveyor (UDF) I worked for introduced 16 oz. coffee milkshakes in the mid 90s, they told us that it contained the same amount of caffeine as an 8 oz cup of coffee.

By: rokusan

rokusan — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:16:43 -0800

Lord knows what the industrial processes are, but my own home-made coffee-flavored desserts are made with espresso, since that's more like concentrated flavor, not with brewed (watery) coffee. That wouldn't work.

So there's your higher percentage caffeine right there: espresso vs coffee.

By: PhoBWanKenobi

PhoBWanKenobi — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 05:56:48 -0800

By: gomichild

gomichild — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 06:42:14 -0800

On a brief trip to the States I got addicted to coffee yogurt - no one happens to have a recipe for making it well do they?

Coffee ice cream is awesome!! Mmmmm. But then I'm a caffeine BRING IT ON type of person.

Interestingly enough green tea ice cream is made from matcha - which is entire ground tea leaves and is considered to have more of a kick to it than normal green tea or coffee. So if you were thinking it was the kinder option caffeine-wise then it's most likely not. There are other health benefits to it though - which the caffeine will help you to keep awake to research.

By: foooooogasm

foooooogasm — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:08:13 -0800

I always have a laugh at those green tea formulations at Starbucks and Tully's and the like.

They certainly have caffeine (and so much sugar that some of them get up to the thousands of calories).

What makes me laugh are the health benefit claims, either expressed or implied.

It's been know for some time that milk proteins prevent the beneficial chemicals from tea (and coffee?) from being absorbed through the human intestine.

If you thought you were getting the health benefits of tea in that green tea dairy bomb, so sorry:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10913-milk-wrecks-the-health-benefits-of-tea.html

http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/2007/01/08/milk_cancels_health_benefits_of_tea.php

Researchers in the past have claimed that milk had no effect on tea because it does not change overall concentration of polyphenols in the blood. But, Stangl told New Scientist, what is important are specific polyphenols, such as EGCG - and milk does block those. "It probably also blocks tea's effect on other things, such as cancer," she says.

By: mareli

mareli — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:22:51 -0800

I used to work in a library that contained a Starbucks. Whenever I had to work until midnight I'd eat one of their espresso brownies, what a treat, and it kept me up all through my 45 minute drive home. I love coffee ice cream, but manage to stay away from it most of the time.

By: cortex

cortex — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:59:01 -0800

[A few comments removed. Probably best not to wander into general Ice Cream Chat territory here.]

By: insectosaurus

insectosaurus — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 09:11:36 -0800

However, I don't know anybody who willfully chooses coffee at the ice cream parlor (although I bet it's used in certain drinks), yet I heard somewhere it's the fourth most popular flavor in the US after strawberry, chocolate and overwhelmingly #1, Vanilla.

I LOVE coffee ice cream. It's my second favorite flavor, after hazelnut [gelato]. Given how hard it is to find hazelnut, coffee is my go-to flavor.

Anyway, the coffee ice cream/caffeine question has been answered at this point. Regarding green tea ice cream, this book has a recipe that calls for 4 tsp matcha (green tea powder) , and makes about a quart of ice cream. The internet says matcha has 3.2g of caffeine per 100g of matcha powder, and my kitchen scale says 1 teaspoon weighs 3 grams. So, the recipe calls for 12g matcha, which then has .384g caffeine, which is 384mg.

So, a half-cup of this particular green tea ice cream has about 48mg of caffeine - that seems reasonable to me, given the caffeine content of coffee ice cream. Matcha is whole-leaf, so it has a lot more caffeine than most green tea. Green tea ice cream made with regular green tea steeped in milk/cream probably has less caffeine.

By: mdn

mdn — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 09:48:05 -0800

How funny. I was recently disappointed because I was looking for caffeine pick up the other day when I was at the farmer's market, and saw that my favorite dairy farm had coffee milk, which its website says is like "melted coffee ice cream," but I specifically noted that it said on the bottle that it was decaf. So I didn't get it...

I've got their coffee ice cream many times, and it doesn't seem to say whether it's caffeinated. This page notes the coffee milk is decaf. I wonder if it's harder to decaffeinate for ice cream, or if they just don't say so for some reason, or what... Certainly seems like if you were going to have one of the two caffeinated it would be the drink, not the dessert, right?

By: aniola

aniola — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:07:29 -0800

Straus uses decaf.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:18:25 -0800

I wonder if it's harder to decaffeinate for ice cream, or if they just don't say so for some reason, or what...

With coffee, it's fair to assume it contains caffeine unless explicitly labeled otherwise. (Now there's something the Mormons could lobby for: labeling à la Kosher.)

By: clavicle

clavicle — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 13:47:54 -0800

So there's your higher percentage caffeine right there: espresso vs coffee.

Do you mean you use espresso on the order of 8 oz per dessert serving? Caffeine content of espresso vs. drip coffee is a little more complicated than it seems on the face of it, and if you're using more like a couple shots at a time, your desserts will likely have less caffeine than their drip-coffee brethren.

I've had coffee ice cream made with brewed coffee, with beans ground very fine, and with cream that's been infused by having whole beans sitting in it for quite some time and then strained out. I infer that, given equal starting quantities of the same kind of coffee for a given quantity of ice cream, the ground-up beans next strongest, brewed coffee next strongest (the brewing extracts caffeine and tasty flavors, but if we're controlling for quantity here, there'll be coffee left behind, make sense?), and the infusion method just a crazy thing that my local does because they're foodies like that (and the ice cream's really fucking tasty). But of course in real life nobody's controlling for anything, so caffeine in your coffee ice cream is kind of a crapshoot. I consume a fair bit of coffee and coffee ice cream but am still pretty caffeine-sensitive; some kinds of ice cream definitely keep me up and some don't.