sweet miscellany

seasonal vegetarian recipes

ice cream

Toasted Pecan & Date Caramel Coconut Milk Ice Cream

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It’s been raining here every day this week and I’m one of the few people that really loves and embraces this type of weather.  I overhead someone complaining the other day about it not being sunny.  I wonder if that same person will be complaining when it’s 100 degrees in a few short weeks.  I’ve been especially grateful for the rain this week because it’s been keeping the temperatures down and making a broken air conditioner in my apartment a little more bearable.  Good thing I also had this tasty ice cream to help cool me down as well.

I guess technically it’s not ice cream since it’s made from coconut milk.  I think the proper term is “non dairy frozen dessert”.  But, that sounds ridiculous, so I’m just going to go with ice cream if that’s okay with you. I’ve been a little underwhelmed with the vegan ice cream options available to me locally so I decided to just bite the bullet and make some this past weekend.  The resulting ice cream was an homage to a certain Texas company’s pecan pralines and cream.  But, it’s healthier, made from whole food ingredients, and a lot tastier.

The ice cream does take a bit of planning ahead due to the chilling/freezing time, so keep that in mind if you want to make it.  I ended up tossing the toasted pecans with a bit of vegan butter to give them a little more depth and flavor, but it’s definitely up to you.  You can actually omit the caramel, replace the vodka with a GF-friendly bourbon, and you’ve got yourself a buttered pecan ice cream.  But, I highly recommend giving this version a go first.  Enjoy your weekend friends 🙂
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Farm to Table: Blueberry Peach Crumble Ice Cream

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I have officially reached the point of not wanting to turn my oven on.  This usually comes sooner in the summer, but Mother Nature decided to tease us with oddly pleasant July temperatures last week.  It was so pleasant outside that I enjoyed a few meals alfresco and did not have to run my AC and fan full blast!  In July nonetheless!  I guess I naively thought it would last all summer, but I was sorely mistaken. At the market on Saturday I was already sticky with sweat at 9 AM.  Yuck.  At least the return of blueberry season helped a tiny bit.  I’ll try not to bore you with rants about the extreme summer heat so this post will simply serve as a notice that there won’t be many baked goods on the blog until September (unless I cave earlier, which will most likely happen).

Moving on to tastier things, ever since Laura’s post, I’ve been dreaming about pie and ice cream.  I was pretty close to making a blueberry and peach pie the other day after the farmers market until I realized that the heat wave had returned.  This caused an internal struggle.  Should I make the pie and sacrifice a comfortable temperature in my apartment, or not make it and be cool? I probably struggled with this for a good while before I realized I could satisfy my craving in ice cream form. My first instinct was to roast the fruit and bake up some crust in the oven.  Then I realized that still required the oven.  Maybe the heat has started to affect my brain.  Anywho, I knew that I had to make adjustments so I did any necessary cooking on the stove.  I cooked up the fruit into a sort of quick jam, mashing it as it cooked so I didn’t have to dirty my blender.  Then, I made a maple sweetened crumble/crust in my cast iron skillet.  It’s kind of like a quick and dirty granola, but oh so tasty!

I know this recipe may have a lot of steps, but they are relatively easy and can be spread out over a couple of days if you wish.  None of the ingredients are too fancy, and I’ve provided notes on substitutions just in case.  This is perhaps one of my favorite ice creams to date, and I don’t make proclamations like this often.  I thought that the roasted strawberry ice cream from my blog was my favorite, but this pie-inspired version may have changed my mind.  I think it’s the maple sweetened crumble that makes it for me because I probably ate half of it while waiting for the ice cream to churn.  Oops.  Oh, and sorry (but not sorry!) for the plethora pictures, but this was one photogenic beauty!

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