Celebrate Good Times

Today is a day for celebration, and the method of celebration is churros with homemade vegan cookies and cream ice-cream.

I am so glad my ice-cream machine is back. I did go on a bit of a spree over the weekend, but I've almost run out of containers to store my ice cream, so I'll have to go back to eating for a bit.

When I mentioned that I was looking to buy an ice-cream machine (before I bought Aisukureemu v1), a co-worker mentioned that he received one a few years ago, and so far he has made 3 batches of ice-cream. He said it's too much effort making the mix and cleaning the machine, so the novelty wore off pretty quickly. I said that wasn't going to happen to me, so he challenged me to make at least one batch of ice-cream per month. I made an Instagram account for him to follow just to prove that I was following through. Unfortunately, even though I have made six batches so far since I bought the first one, the fact that I didn't have one for all of December meant that I wasn't able to keep up with his request. Nevertheless, I am still determined to make one a month while I have a machine.

While we had no internet, I discovered the Gelati Messina recipe book at the local library. It goes into some of the science behind creating ice-cream / gelati / sorbet, including how each of the different ingredients changes the final texture. I discovered that sugar isn't only used to sweeten the flavour, it also lowers the freezing temperature of the final product. Milk powder is also added for the protein it contains, which is used to bind to the water molecules in the mixture, so the final product doesn't end up too icy, which is probably a problem that a lot of dairy-free ice-creams tend to have.

I discovered pea protein powder at the supermarket, and tried making some ice-cream with that, which was already quite thick even before I put it in the ice-cream machine. As today was cookies and cream day, I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I will see how it is tomorrow. It did take quite a long time to freeze to a scoopable state. The book says 2-3 hours should be enough, but even after 5 hours, some of it was still a bit mushy. But I checked today, and it seems to be hard enough to scoop.

The flavours I've made so far are: vanilla, vanilla with chocolate brownies, gingerbread and, cookies and cream. I tried vanilla with mango swirls, but that failed dismally.

On my list to try so far are:

• vanilla with caramel swirls
• banana
• choc banana
• vanilla with mango swirls
• custard
• apple crumble
• caramel and pear
• choc strawberry
• coconut and mango
• rockmelon
• watermelon
• honeydew
• sea salt caramel espresso
• green tea
• strawberry cheesecake

I haven't even finished the Gelati Messina recipe book, and there are so many ideas from there.