Vice Cream: Gourmet Vegan Desserts
by Jeff Rogers
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Book Reviews of Vice Cream: Gourmet Vegan Desserts
Book Review: Who would have thought cashews would make such tasty ice cream
Summary: 5 Stars
You don't have to be a vegan to enjoy the ice cream the recipes in this book make. It's a small book packed with simple recipes. The main "vice cream" recipe is repeated throughout, with variations to help guide you in making a wide variety of flavors. Sure, the ingredients can be expensive, especially as you choose organic versions. But, the ice cream is rich and can last. I've found that the ice cream this makes is smooth and creamy, whereas other vegan-style recipe books for ice cream recommend the use of soy milk and a thickener (arrowroot or silken tofu) and it gets that freezer-burny crunchy texture. Follow a few tips that I've mentioned below, and you'll really get the most out of this book.
1) Read the instructions in the front first. There's a couple of pages of tips. Mainly, you need to blend the heck out of the cashews in order to avoid a gritty texture. If you have a weak blender like me, this just means that you add the water in slowly rather than all at once, and that you let it puree for about 10 minutes.
2) You can substitute soy milk for water in the recipes. This makes for a healthy ice cream and I think it just adds to the smoothness. The cashews are a soft nut and really blend well.
3) Cool your mixture in the fridge if you have time. Not necessary, but I find that with all the blending, it can add just a bit of heat to the mixture so 10+ minutes in the fridge helps reduce that heat from the friction.
4) Pair this with the Midas Non-Motorized Ice Cream Maker that can also be found on Amazon.com, and you'll have great ice cream in 20 minutes at the most.
5) The leftovers, if there are any, freeze very well but need about 10 minutes to thaw before you can effectively get a scoop through them.
6) I don't have the same sweet tooth that I used to. Halving the book's recommended amount of sweetener (typically maple syrup) still yields an extremely tasty ice cream. Similarly, the recipes often call for 2 teaspoons of an extract for the main flavor, such as peppermint, and you can often get by with half of that. I made the base "vice cream" and substituted butterscotch extract instead of peppermint and made a great butterscotch that would have been better had I used a single teaspoon and no more. I'd imagine that you could use root beer extract for a fun root beer-flavored ice cream, and so on.
7) Vanilla beans are called for in a lot of recipes. They're not cheap, so a decent vanilla extract works well. Alcohol-free extracts are recommended so that you don't counteract the freezing process.
Book Review: Great starting point
Summary: 4 Stars
What I love about this book:
~Proves you don't have to suffer an ice-cream-less existence just because you've given up dairy
~Gives great, healthful alternatives to sugar
~Lots of recipes to make you drool
What I don't love:
-The author is nit-picky about a lot of ingredients/details (i.e. organic cashews, alcohol-free vanilla flavor and alcohol-free almond flavor, "Sugar Loaf" pineapple, etc). Making suggestions to use these things is fine, but the book makes it seem mandatory. My husband & I do not use alcohol-free vanilla flavor nor do we use whole vanilla beans or og cashews, because the only alcohol-free vanilla flavor we can find contains sugar and vanilla beans and og cashews cost a small fortune. We don't think the alcohol inhibits the freezing enough to worry about it. And what is "Sugar Loaf" pineapple anyway? Never seen it.
-Doesn't give alternatives to things like "fresh coconut." What a pain! We buy a good quality canned coconut milk (Thai Kitchen Coconut Milk Brand is great and in this case we do find that the organic version is noticeably better) and have made ice-cream as good as Coconut Bliss.*
*Coconut Bliss: A coconut milk ice-cream made in Oregon, I don't know if it's available elsewhere, but it's super yummy).
-More cashew recipes than coconut milk recipes. We prefer coconut based ice-cream much better than the cashew ones, but you may disagree.
So in short use this book with a willingness to experiment & deviate from the ingredient lists. We're glad to have it and use it as reference and for ideas frequently, but it's no bible of vegan ice-cream. That's for sure.
PS. So far, the Chai is our favorite! We combine both cashews and coconut milk to make it and go heavy on the nutmeg (here fresh ground is best but the stuff in a jar is good too) and allspice and add vanilla. We want to try new flavors, but we keep going back to this one!
Book Review: Lovely and educational book
Summary: 4 Stars
If you are used to putting evaporated milk and strawberry jam into your ice cream maker to get a quick batch of ice cream, this isn't the book for you. This book neccesitiates time to prepare the ingredients.
I am truly grateful for, and laud this book. It's a primer on making nut milk, and I learned alot. It's a vegan raw foods cornucopia for ice cream recipe translation. All the ingredients listed are fresh.
Unfortunately, all of the coconut recipes were useless to me because they required fresh coconut juice or to make fresh coconut milk with the pulp. Outside of the tropics, this is expensive or impossible. One can substitute cashews, but then it's not coconut ice cream. My only thought is, either the author is a purist with no acceptable alternatives but fresh ingredients, or he decided not to give any helpful "in a pinch" substitutions for canned coconut milk, or commercial almond milk because people are lazy and wouldn't take the trouble to use fresh, enzyme rich ingredients. Thus, this took some trial and error on my part to get the recipes right using canned coconut milk. Being imperfect (and busy), I try to reach some middle ground between raw and non dairy, and lifestyle functional.
This book is full of accurate proportions and taste ideas, it's a valuable tool for making non dairy ice cream.
Just a note: After having a heckuva time with those "pre freeze your cannister" type ice cream makers, I bought a Gelato with it's own compressor off Amazon. It's so great, you can make ice cream on the spot, batch after batch. With a pizzelle maker at hand, you make your own cones and the kids have so much fun, they don't miss Baskin Robins.
Book Review: Where's nutritional information?
Summary: 3 Stars
This book is an interesting way to introduce people to vegan/raw food eating, via frozen dessert recipes. However:
There is no nutritional information. How much is supposed to be a "serving"? Nuts and coconuts are full of fat, yes, perhaps better than animal fat, but still not great for you if consumed to excess.
What do you do with the pulp leftover from juicing? Those who are already into the raw food movement would know, but not the general book buyer, who more than likely was drawn to this book after seeing "Dairy-Free" in the title. Composting the pulp makes these recipes extra expensive, not to mention you're just throwing the fiber away--and if you are going the organic route that stuff could go into the frozen dessert, extending it, and not even noticed if served more as a granita than as a smooth ice cream-type dessert.
Also, why not use some fresh mint leaves, for example, instead of very expensive mint flavoring?
This book, while intriguing, is somewhat smug, especially with the constant harping about "organic" and "raw food" (especially when it mentions shelling of cashews heating the nuts). It is also expensive, with most recipes being variations on a master recipe, a lot of repetitive instructions, and quite a bit of blank space. If it had been published in a more environmentally-friendly manner, the book would be the size of a small pamphlet, so the price, even Amazon's, is 'way on the high side.
Buy used, or borrow from the library. Even if you are not a vegan or a raw foodie these recipes would be an interesting and healthy alternative to regular ice creams.
Book Review: good place to begin
Summary: 4 Stars
i got this because i should not eat dairy and we live in a place where it is hard to get ice cream and it's expensive. We've made the mint a few times and decided that it only needs a 1/4 cup of maple. We made the strawberry with whole berries rather than juicing them and it was very good, again it needs only a little syrup. When we get more ingredients for the other recipes we will try more. i am also experimenting with less cashews and adding rice dream "milk". (the cashews make it quite rich- a little more than my liking so i try to lower the amount.) It's great to be able to use many shelf stable items. I recommended the book to a friend who gave up dairy. They dug out the old ice cream maker for the first time in years and have enjoyed trying some of the yummy fruit vice cream recipes. Do not think this is a cheap home method to standard ice cream. but it is a great alternative for those who don't do dairy. I suggest experimenting to make things to your liking. would like to try almonds in place of cashews- has anyone tried that?