Vegan dessert experiments

One of the biggest challenges in our attempts to go dairy-free (or nearly free) is figuring out how to get the dairy out of dessert. Cookies aren't really a problem; not only has Brian invented at least one good vegan cookie recipe, we can make pretty much any cookie vegan by using plant-based butter and aquafaba (or another vegan substitute) in place of the butter and eggs. And we've already discovered that our favorite chocolate pudding is actually better with almond milk than with the skim milk we used to use. But there are still lots of desserts we love that are heavily dairy-dependent, with no obvious way of making them otherwise.

The most obvious example is raspberry fool. This simple dessert pretty much has nothing in it but raspberries, sugar, and cream—and in a spectacular case of bad timing, we discovered it only about a month before I first started thinking about getting off the moo juice. So even as I was giving up milk, I was assuming it would be pretty much impossible to give up cream without also giving up this fabulous dessert. I'd seen vegan whipped creams in the store, but they were all the kind that comes in a spray can, which would be impractical for a dessert that calls for the stuff in bulk. And all our attempts to make vegan whipped cream at home, using either chilled coconut milk, aquafaba, or a combination of the two, had been spectacular failures.

However, I still had hopes that I could at least find a decent vegan substitute for the canned whipped cream of which I've long been such a heavy consumer. And one day, while searching for "best vegan whipped cream," I hit upon a recommendation for a product called Coco Whip from So Delicious. This stuff comes in a plastic tub, like Cool Whip, but unlike that product, it truly is vegan (and doesn't have as many weird, unpronounceable ingredients). And after a little digging around on the So Delicious store locator, I was able to find that it's available at a nearby Shop-Rite.

The reviews of this stuff on the web mostly said that the product itself is great, but the packaging is a pain in the butt. Many reviewers said the tub was really hard to open, and some had actually cut themselves trying. So we were a little wary when we first tried it, but we found it wasn't all that bad. It requires a little force, but it wasn't actually hazardous. And to our delight, the Coco Whip blended almost as well with our mashed, sweetened raspberries as real whipped cream. It had the same light, fluffy texture, and if the flavor had a faint hint of coconut to it, there was nothing about it that was incompatible with the raspberries. The only thing we didn't like about the product is that it comes in a nonrecyclable plastic tub, but that's probably less damaging to the environment than cream from a methane-belching cow. (And to be fair, the cardboard cartons that we buy cream in aren't recyclable either, since they're lined with plastic.)

After the success of that vegan dessert experiment, I was emboldened to suggest another one this week. We happened to have some silken tofu left over after making another batch of our recently discovered vegan mozzarella, and I was musing about whether it would make a good substitute for evaporated milk in a pumpkin pie. Brian had heard about this kind of "tofumpkin" pie before (a friend of his made one during his post-doc years, which he dubbed the "resplendent tofumpkin" pie), so he knew it was theoretically possible, but he'd never actually tasted it. So we decided to give it a try this weekend, and if it worked, we might consider making this year's Thanksgiving pumpkin pie the same way.

Brian did some research on tofu pumpkin pie recipes and came up with one that was sort of a composite from several different websites. The filling was:

• 5 to 6 oz. silken tofu
• 8 oz. canned pumpkin
• 3/8 c. sugar
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp. ground cloves
• 1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg

To make it a true vegan experiment, Brian also decided to make the crust with our favorite vegan butter, rather than the real butter he's been using in his pie crusts ever since he discovered what shortening does to your arteries. So the crust contained:

• 1/4 c. fake butter
• 3/4 c. flour
• a little less than 1/4 tsp. salt

He said he had to add much less water to this crust than he usually does, presumably because there's more moisture in the vegan butter than there is in real butter. He started out with 2 tablespoons of water, and even that turned out to be too much, so he had to add a little more flour. He eventually managed to get a workable dough, rolled it out, laid it in the pan, filled it with the custard, and baked for about 10 minutes at 450 and another half-hour at 350.

Sadly, this experiment was not nearly as successful as the first one. Part of the reason the pie looks a little odd here is that it's a half-sized pie baked in a slightly-larger-than-half-sized pan, since Brian forgot when he started the recipe that our smallest pie pan is currently in use as a cat dish. But the other reason is that tofu, even silken tofu, simply doesn't have the same texture as evaporated milk and beaten eggs. The pumpkin filling never firmed up to the point that you could put a knife in and have it come out clean; it remained soft and dense, with a custardy texture that isn't what you expect in a pie. And the crust, while acceptable, was crisp and hard, not light and flaky like a true butter crust.

So it looks like when Thanksgiving comes around, we'll have to take a break from our dairy-free eating and buy ourselves a can of evaporated milk and a pound of real cow-based butter for the pies. But since Thanksgiving comes but once a year, I'm not going to worry about it too much. It's probably more important to focus on trying to find a vegan whipped cream substitute for our everyday use. (Coco Whip is great in a fool, but keeping it on hand for other desserts isn't really practical, since it doesn't keep nearly as long as well as whipped cream in a pressurized can).