Sunday 30 September 2018

VeganMoFo 2018 #30: Ice Cream in my Kitchen (Recipe Round-Up: Hearty Vegan Meals)



Sunday 30th: Kitchen Tour – Now the month is concluding, show us where the magic has been happening!

This prompt has popped up a few times over the years of MoFo, and I have given kitchen tours before. So for something a bit different, I thought it would be fun to highlight an appliance in my kitchen. So today I am going to be talking about my ice cream maker, as well as giving a mini recipe round-up.

It is a Sunbeam Gelateria, which Mum got me for my birthday about.... 13 years ago I want to say? I have used it sporadically, but not as often as I should. It is a pretty heavy machine, it has a cooling unit in it so you don't need to pre-freeze any bowls (though you still need the mixture itself to be cool). It makes 1L of ice cream, so I sometimes have to scale down recipes to make sure it fits. No photo of mine, as we are doing renovations and it is currently on the lounge room floor surrounded by other things.

I have recently been trying to use it more, and I turned to Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster Appetite for some ice cream recipes to try. Since I bought it, this book has been republished as Home-Cooked Vegan Comfort Food, and it was written by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman. You can see what else I've made from this book here.

Peanut Butter Ice Cream: This was so yummy, and had a great peanut butter taste. It is a blend of peanut butter, silken tofu, and cream cheese. I blended these, plus the rest of the ingredients, in my food processor (rather than using an immersion blender), and it is like a thick peanut butter cream when it comes out. Put it in the fridge to chill and you have peanut butter mousse. Put it in the ice cream maker and you have delicious ice cream! It does go super hard in the freezer, I will say, so leftovers need to be taken out to thaw for a good while first.
Rating: :D

Peanut Butter Ice Cream


Peanut Butter Molasses Shake: This uses the above ice cream, mixed with some molasses (it says to use regular, I used blackstrap), banana, salt, and milk. It makes a small serving, but it is very rich.
Rating: :)

Peanut Butter Molasses Shake


Simply Vanilla Ice Cream and Apple Pie with Pecan Crust: This vanilla ice cream is amazing, with a delicious and intense vanilla flavour (thanks to vanilla bean and vanilla extract... I used vanilla paste with seeds in place of a scraped vanilla bean). The base is a nut creamer, though I also had to add a bit of oat milk to make up the volume. It was perfect with a warm slice of apple pie! The pastry crust of the pie was very sticky, and stuck a lot to my fingers when I was trying to press it into the pie plate. It is filled with home cooked apples, I accidentally cooked mine a bit too soft but it was still fine. Best of all, it cuts into great looking slices!
Rating: Ice Cream :D, Apple Pie :)

Apple Pie with Pecan Crust; Simply Vanilla Ice Cream


Mint Chip Ice Cream: Eehhh... so to preface I don't really like a lot of mint things... too much like toothpaste. But I was making a particularly garlicky pizza, and I knew my parents liked mint ice cream, so I gave it a whirl. They liked it, I found it a lot like toothpaste. Actually it was pretty good before freezing, but once frozen... toothpaste. I also only used half the amount of mint extract - 1 TBS instead of two... two would have been blow your head off minty, I think. The chip aspect comes from chocolate shavings, the traditional form of chocolate in this sort of ice cream, but they really kind of got lost both taste and texture wise. I think either grinding up the the chocolate or using crushed chocolate chips would have been much better.
Rating: :| (but take this with a grain of salt, if you like mint and chocolate you will like this)

Mint Chip Ice Cream


So.... the end of MoFo for another year. I have had a great time reading everyone's posts and seeing their Instagram! It is always a lot of work, but a lot of fun. Until next year, I'll just be doing my regular blogging for whoever feels like reading it here!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post

All Four Kitties


Even though it is a terrible and blurry photo, this always had to be the final photo for my kitty group photo month. All four cats are in this photo, though to varying degrees. This is the only photo I have with the four of them 'together'!

8 comments:

  1. That's so cool that you have an ice cream maker! The peanut butter ice cream sounds amazing, and the apple pie & vanilla ice cream looks perfect! Congrats on a successful Vegan MoFo; you had such great posts, and I loved seeing all your kitty photos!

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    1. I was very pleased with how the pie and ice cream turned out!

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  2. Since I've fallen in love with the So Delicious frozen mousse, I feel like I need peanut butter mousse in my life!
    I almost din't see Dim Sim in the pic, but I see her little ears!

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    1. Those tiny black ears just peeking over the sofa! Away from the other three, of course!

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  3. I really enjoyed your MoFo posts too!
    How convenient to have a cooling unit in your ice cream maker -- I love making ice cream but it always takes some planning (and freezer space) to have everything cooled in advance. Your desserts all look great! I love a good vanilla ice cream.

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    1. It definitely makes things easier without having to freeze a big bowl for the machine. Though it is a huge, heavy unit for a fairly small amount of ice cream, so there is that trade off.

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  4. It is very easy to do too much mint. But a whole tbsp seems like a lot. I love mint but I don't have it much since my husband is the same as you or as he puts it "I don't want to brush my teeth when eating chocolate" lol

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    1. I mean, on the plus side, minty fresh breath for the evening!
      It is a finicky flavour. Especially because fresh mint is so lovely.

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