Chinese Ice cream cheese pudding is probably something you never heard of. This is also not something you will find in many Asian dessert shops. This particular dessert is found in Chinese Literature and TV shows. It first appeared in Dream of the Red Chamber and also in Story of Minglan (Novel and TV show). This dessert is what Ancient Chinese considered to be ice cream. While there are several mentions of this dessert in different dynasty, it’s unclear when it was actually invented.
What is Ice cream cheese pudding?
Milk has a long history in China even though it’s not readily available to everyone. Milk or milk products are often mentioned in historical literature. The name is peculiar but essentially warm milk is combined with glutinous rice wine, steamed and forms a slightly solidified state. The texture is creamy, silky like cream cheese but has a slight wine taste due to the rice wine. It’s also a very light dessert where you don’t feel It’s very closely related to the a dessert called Old Beijing Cream cheese ( 老北京奶酪) which uses the exact same ingredients but is served warm. It’s also similar to Ginger milk pudding which is a Cantonese dessert.
How to make it
There are a couple of steps to making this dish and it doesn’t involve a lot of special cooking equipment. The milk is heated up with sugar until it’s boiling. The milk is then cooled. The glutinous rice wine is strained. The liquid is stirred into milk. Then the milk mixture is poured into ramekins
The ramekins are covered with plastic wrap, steamed for 20 minutes. After steaming, it’s chilled in the fridge for at least 2 hours. When ready to serve,
This is also great to make ahead of time if you are thinking about serving this to guest.
Pro-tip
- The ratio of the milk to the rice wine is 2:1
- If there are any milk skin that develop during the cooling process, take it off before mixing the rice wine in.
- Let it sit for at least 2 hours. Serve right out of the fridge as you would want to serve this dessert cold.
Chinese Ice Cream Pudding
Ingredients
- 400 ml 2% milk
- 1½ tbsp sugar
- 200 ml glutinous rice wine
Topping
- osmanthus honey optional
Instructions
- Heat the milk and sugar in a pot on medium heat. Heat until there are small bubbles in the milk. Take it off the heat and let it cool for about 2-3 minutes.
- Strain out the sweet rice wine leaving only the liquid. The rice left over, you save it and serve with Chinese glutinous rice balls or tangyuan.
- Skim off the milk skin and pour the sweet rice wine into the milk and mix. Pour the milk mixture into individual ramekins
- Cover with plastic wrap and steam for 20 minutes.
- Let it cool and rest in the fridge for 2 hours. Serve with honey or Osmanthus honey.
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