Honey Ice-Cream

Ingredients
400ml soy milk
200g coconut cream
17g dextrose
100g honey (I used manuka)

Method
Mix all ingredients together over low heat. Leave in fridge to cool for at least 4 hours. Churn in ice-cream machine.

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The first time I made this, I followed Nick Palumbo's recipe from his book Gelato Messina, but I think the xanthan gum gave it a weird gummy texture, and the soy bean powder I used to replace the skim milk powder made the soy flavour too overwhelming (and gave it a weird spotted grey appearance). I decided I'd try cutting back on the ingredients, and the overall texture leans a bit on the icy side. I wanted to reduce the coconut cream : milk ratio to lessen the coconut flavour, but maybe going for a honey-coconut flavour would be better. It almost tastes like a frozen version of the honey-sweetened teas you can find in Japan.

If I were to do it again, I'd probably do a 50:50 ratio of milk to cream, but otherwise, the flavour is nice. Not too sweet.

The inspiration came from a gelato we had from Pretto Gelateria Arte Italiana in Milan (the bottom flavour). Even though it looks plain, it had a nice honey flavour to it, that wasn't too overwhelming. It was listed as a milk-honey flavour, which is something we hadn't seen before, and that's what led me to pick it.

The nice thing about using honey in ice-cream is that you don't have to add as much sugar, since honey is also a sweetener and can lower the freezing point of the ice-cream mix.

Speaking of ice-cream, redbeanpork, MrFodder and I got to try the watermelon ice-cream sandwich from Milkcow.

We weren't sure if the "seeds" were non-dairy chocolate, so only MrFodder tried them. The sorbet was nice, but it was far too much for one person to eat. We struggled to finish it between the three of us. The little plastic spoons weren't great for eating the actual watermelon either. And it was pretty messy to eat, so definitely not something you want to get take-away. But for $10, it's a novel dessert that was pretty tasty, so I think it was worth it.