Saturday, October 27, 2012

Book Review - Vegan a la Mode and Guest Poster!


When Skyhorse Publishing agreed to provide a copy of Vegan a la Mode by Hannah Kaminsky for this giveaway, the first thing that flashed into my mind was my step daughter's family. She is probably one of the best cooks I know and her whole family loves ice cream! She seemed the natural choice to review this book and I was thrilled when she agreed without hesitation. It's such a pleasure to be able to share our love of cooking.

Here is her review of the book. Thanks Ty!!

Our family experiments a lot with ice cream and although we are not vegan, we are always trying to find new ways of perfecting our craft. Vegan recipes offer not only a delicious plant-based alternative to the rich dairy based desserts, it’s generally cheaper. Over the years I have tasted many store-bought vegan ice creams, and a few (usually coconut milk based) do appeal to me, but often they fail to satisfy my craving for actual ice cream. We tested two recipes from Vegan A ‘La Mode, Bitter Orange Sorbet and Horchata Ice Cream, and my craving was satisfied. 

The book is beautiful and easy to follow with great pictures and reference material. I recommend reading the “Troubleshooting” section before getting started, it has invaluable tips on avoiding ice cream catastrophe (ex: the stabilizer recipe to keep sorbet smooth).  We are a “jump-right-in” kind of family, so this suggestion is in hindsight. Both recipes turned out deliciously craveable the first time, even without modification; however some slight adjustments would probably amount to perfection. I want to work my through every recipe in the book and would be happy to give/receive this book as a gift, vegan or not. 




Mason, my 6 year old, picked Bitter Orange Sorbet, and this mini-foodie knows great flavors. It was an easy recipe to follow and we had a great time with it. First we made our orange sugar syrup. In hindsight I would have cooked the sugar syrup longer and taken it to a thicker "thread" stage. In my experience this helps keep sorbet smooth and creamy in the freezer, rather than turning to ice. The author offers a vegan stabilizer recipe to achieve this. Another way to accomplish this, I have heard, is to substitute some brown rice syrup for some of the sugar, but I have yet to try it.  While the syrup simmered we juiced our fruit. 


We made one adjustment to achieve the "bitter" undertone. We were not able to find the sour variety of oranges, as the recipe note suggests.  We substituted a 1/4 cup of extra grapefruit juice for 1/4 cup of the orange juice because our oranges were really sweet.


So after our orange sugar syrup cooled and we mixed with the juices, it was on to the ice cream maker. We have an electric Cuisinart Pure Indulgence, which is a staple in our kitchen. We churned until smooth and thick then transferred, covered, and put in freezer, BUT....not before sampling the fruits of our labor. It was slightly sweet, tangy without making our jaw clench, a hint of each juice came through without any being overpowering, and it melted in our mouths. It was delectable and I could not wait to eat again the next day. This is where the effort to make it creamy would have been nice.....it froze rock-solid. We moved it to the fridge for a few minutes to soften, then mixed well. It was still a bit "slushy" like, rather than the creamy texture it had night before, but who doesn’t love a great slushy?!


Our overall experience with this recipe was excellent and left me very excited about the 2nd trial.... Horchata ice cream!!!.....Stay Tuned.....

OK folks! It's time for another giveaway. This was can be shipped anywhere so everyone can join in the commenting fun. Leave a comment about the craziest or most interesting ice cream flavor you've ever had. If you haven't gone outside that box yet, just post about your favorite ice cream treat. Please make sure you post before midnight MST tomorrow night. The winner (and the Horchata ice cream review) will be posted on Monday. Sweet dreams.

24 comments:

  1. Hmmm well when I was a kid I loved Tiger Stripe which was orange swirled with black liquorice. Yum!

    Laura, lola_318@yahoo.ca
    www.blueeyedbookworm.com

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  2. The craziest I've had was pink peppercorn at the Great Sage in MD. It was kind of strange - I'm not sure I loved it, but I'm glad I tried it.

    I have some of Kaminsky's eBooks, and I love those! I'll have to check this one out.

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  3. I haven't tried any crazy ones, but I used to like apple-cinnamon ice cream.

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  4. Craziest ice cream? That's got to be the jalapeno ice cream from "The Vegan Scoop." It's got the dubious honor of being the only recipe we tried and didn't like.

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  5. I once made a "cheese" flavoured ice cream with teese. You could definitely say it was interesting!

    This book is at the top of my wish list - I checked it out from the library, and realized I would never be able to make all the flavours I wanted to before I had to return it. I actually thought to myself, "maybe someone will give it away during Mofo and I'll win it!!" Ahh, Mofo!

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  6. Okay,I'm boring and have yet to try an unusual flavor.My favorite is cookie dough! Karen

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  8. I don't think I've really tried any "crazy" ice cream flavors. I've been intrigued by corn ice cream for quite a while, though!

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  9. I haven't tried any truly crazy ice cream flavors, but cherry amaretto from Coconut Bliss is my favorite any day ice cream!

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    1. I love that flavor too! I once sandwiched it between the almond cookies from Vcon and it was even more blissful!

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  10. Over the years I've tried my hand at some pretty cool ice creams - probably the most exotic was the rose water ice cream with rice noodles in it and sour cherry syrup on top. It was good!

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  11. Strawberry cheesecake has always been my fave. Never have seen a vegan version though. :-(

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  12. I've never really had any weird ice cream flavors. Always stick with the classics.

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  13. My favourite is peppermint choc chip... pretty common but sometimes you can't beat a classic!

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  14. I haven't tried any weird flavours yet, but as far as I remember I've never met any ice cream I didn't like (with the exception of rum ice cream, but that's because I don't like rum!)... At the moment my favourites are white soy chocolate, raspberry and pear.

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  15. Garlic ice cream. I love garlic but this was so wrong.
    Chocolate chili orange was weird but this was actually really good! :)

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  16. I tried a grape flavoured nerd sorbet from my local vegan friendly gelateria this summer, it was pretty awesome but I prefer their pistachio or pink lemonade flavours. I've had this book & that exact ice cream maker on my wish-list for ages so I'd love to win this!

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  17. I like to use a mod of the V'con recipe (using soy creamer instead of coconut and switching the creamer and soy milk amounts) and use the PB variation. But instead of using actual PB (I'm allergic), I use 1/2 Freenut butter (a PB sub made from roasted sunflower seeds) and 1/2 crunchy Speculoos. The first time I made this, I also tried to add in a fudge ribbon (but I used a crap hot fudge recipe so it wasn't particularly fudgy). As you can imagine, it was the stuff dreams are made of.

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  18. I don't know if it's weird, but in RI we have Grape Nut ice cream, which is exactly that - ice cream mixed with Grape Nuts. It's really good! Hey, you may as well get your daily fiber along with your daily sugar :)

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  19. I've never tried any crazy flavors. The best I've tried is Haitian mango sorbet.

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  20. I really like ice cream cake. I've made vegan ones a few times. So good.

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  21. I made a lime and chilli coconut milk ice cream once to go with a mexican feast and it was the perfect ending. I've also been known to make black licorice ice cream for both my dad and my father in law as they are both licorice fiends. This book looks beautiful!

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  22. Never had anything too crazy myself, except for maybe turron ice cream, which is common in Spain. :) I think my favourite ice cream flavour is cookie dough or pistachio...

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