Ice Cream

Imagine this in royal blue

One of the vegan items I have tried in the past are the faux ice creams sold in the grocery. Because of my lactose intolerance, I thought they might be a good substitute since the products were becoming numerous in the freezer section.  Every one that I tried whether it was soy or rice based was awful.  There was too much sugar and a chemical taste to  the product.  It has been several years since I had one, but I am not really interested in venturing into that part of the freezer section again. I have made a lot of ice creams in years past that were quite yummy.  I had a Cuisinart Ice Cream maker that really churned out a good product.  However, the quality control for Cuisinart is not that good these days.  While my original food processor lasted 25 years, the  newer products seemed to have a 5 year expiration date.  So one day the engine on my ice cream maker just died.

My preferred chocolate

Kitchen Aid now makes a freezer bowl attachment for the stand mixer.  I have only used it a few times, but the results were not good for either ice cream or sorbet.  But I wanted to try a vegan variety of ice cream.  I found a traditional ice cream recipe for Caramel Ice Cream with Chocolate and Pecan from the Barefoot Contessa and decided to try and adapt it.  Sugar and water are cooked until it caramelizes then I added a mix of rice and almond milk.  The sugar hardens, then you cook the mix until it dissolves.  The batter is then chilled.  After it cooled I added it to the freezer and churned for 30 minutes.  When the churning was done, I added the chocolate and pecans and froze the mix. The batter did not have the ice cream consistency I was looking for. This is what had happened before when I used real cream. I went ahead and froze the mix over night.  The next day, the resulting product reminded me of an Italian Granita.  The taste was very good, but the texture was not the creamy one I was looking for.

I am not sure in the difference was because of the ice cream maker or the use of non dairy milks.  I did some internet research and found two procedural errors in the creating of the ice cream. First, I should have allowed the batter to chill for 24 hours in the refrigerator.  Second, I should started the mixer and added the batter to the moving paddle.  Next time I try an ice cream, I will do that.  After all that, the product was very good tasting and we had no problems finishing it off.

The ice cream was a great dessert after the Avocado Tomato and Lettuce Sandwich with tofu mayonnaise that I had for dinner.  I used a sprouted 7 grain bread.