A couple of months ago, I mentioned to MrBrioche that I'm making coffee ice-cream for MrFodder. He's my coffee bean mule, so I asked him to get some beans for me, and also asked for his recommendation on whether to go a darker bean, or not. MrBrioche said that I shouldn't waste my money on coffee beans for ice-cream, I should just use instant coffee. He's someone I consider a cheap-ass coffee connoisseur - I think he manages to find a good balance between quality and cost. So I was surprised to hear such a statement from him. Regardless, I disagreed with him, and set out to prove it.
Many batches of ice-cream later, and I felt like I was getting close to getting a good consistency for vegan coffee ice-cream. My latest experiment, with cold brew coffee didn't work so well, and I found that heating coffee to try and get rid of the water just left a burnt taste. So instead I tried just leaving it out to evaporate naturally.
The part of the taste test that excited me the most wasn't learning something new about ice-cream, it was the fact that I had managed to convince three other people who share the same name as MrBrioche to join the taste test. So it was going to be a MrBriocheX day!
I mentioned this to D, and he asked a very important question: Do the people know that they're going to be getting vegan ice-cream? He added that he'd be pretty disappointed if he was expecting real ice-cream and got vegan ice-cream instead. I panicked. Ice-cream day was only 3 days away, I wasn't going to have time to practice a heap of batches of real ice-cream. I headed straight for my new hero David Lebovitz, but his ice-cream recipe, and the one from Serious Eats both required egg yolks, and I didn't have any plans for egg whites. The one from Gelati Messina was actually vegan, but required maltodextrin, which I wasn't able to find. In the end, I settled for Nigella Lawson's one-step no-churn coffee ice-cream, which required only double cream, sweetened condensed milk, instant coffee and golden syrup.
I made one batch with instant coffee, and one batch with the cold brew coffee I had made earlier and took them into the office.
I managed to get six MrBrioches in the end! SIX!!! I love it when people who share the same name are together, and it made me so happy that I managed to find six. I had four to start with, and it ended with a tie vote. I remembered that there was another MrBrioche on my floor, so I asked him to join us, but he wasn't in the office yet and the ice-cream was starting to melt! I put it in the fridge and hoped he would be in soon.
I also got two Michaels (one voted dark, one voted light), and a couple people who didn't share a name with anyone else (both voted dark). The other MrBrioche made it in, and voted light, and he said there are actually two MrBrioches on the team, so I waited for the other one to get into the office, and he also voted light.
In the end, the votes were 5-5 light and dark, but from the MrBrioches, 4 of them voted light, and 2 voted dark. MrFodder voted for light as well, so I guess that one wins.
The light one was the coffee bean one, but most people said they liked it because it wasn't as strong, less bitter, and had a smoother taste. Everyone said the dark one was more intense. Other Michael, who I consider a true coffee snob, picked out which one was made from instant coffee right away, and said he'd shoot himself before picking the instant coffee ice-cream as the better option.
So I didn't really prove MrBrioche wrong (as I didn't get MrFodder's vote until a minute ago), but I was really happy to have so many MrBrioches around me at once. It was a really good day.
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