Gardeners' Holidays 2020: Raspberry Fest

Summer is officially under way, and for once the weather is in sync with the calendar. We're looking at temperatures in the eighties this weekend and into the nineties next week, with thunderstorms on and off all week long. (I took a risk today and hung laundry on the line, so now it's a toss-up whether I'll have to take it back down wet and throw it in the dryer, or the rain will hold off and Brian will have to water the garden instead.)

In the garden, we're getting plenty of lettuce and a smattering of snap peas, and the arugula, which we barely got a taste of, has already bolted in the summer heat. But the only thing we're really producing in abundance now is raspberries. We've actually reached the point where we don't need to buy fruit at the market every week, because we're producing enough for each day's lunch right off our own canes.

This abundance of berries inspired me to take one more crack at making a vegan version of raspberry fool. In the past, we've always tried using some version of whipped coconut milk, and no matter how closely we follow the directions — chilling the can overnight, scooping out only the solids — it never works at all. The stuff always comes out far too solid, and it's like trying to whip a blob of vegetable shortening. (Eww.)

So this time, I decided to search specifically for non-coconut alternatives to whipped cream. That led me to this recipe from Nora Cooks, which is based on aquafaba. We'd tried whipping aquafaba before and found it didn't get stiff enough, but this recipe adds a little cream of tartar, which we thought might be just enough to get the frothy consistency we needed. It also adds a whole lot of powdered sugar, but since our fool recipe calls for sweetened fruit and unsweetened whipped cream, Brian decided to leave that out.

So he simply got out our entire stock of frozen aquafaba cubes from the freezer, thawed it, and got about a half-cup of liquid — just enough for the recipe. Then he stirred in an eighth of a teaspoon of cream of tartar, crossed his fingers, and introduced the beaters. And lo and behold, it worked! The aquafaba whipped right up to a nice frothy consistency — a bit more like a meringue than whipped cream, but certainly stiff enough and voluminous enough to mix with the crushed fruit. We knew from experience that it wouldn't keep well in the fridge, so we just mixed the fruit right in and ate it immediately.

This vegan raspberry fool wasn't quite as tasty as the dairy-based original. The whipped aquafaba was much less substantial than real whipped cream, so it didn't have the same creamy, satisfying mouthfeel. But the flavor of the fruit pretty effectively masked the bean-based origins of the aquafaba, and the texture was certainly fluffy and light. And, as a bonus, it's much lower in calories and fat than the original version. Made with aquafaba in place of cream, and with only a few tablespoons of sugar in the whole batch, this vegan raspberry fool could, with a little squinting, be considered a healthy indulgence.

We'll probably continue to experiment with other vegan whipped cream alternatives to see if we can find one that has both the creaminess and the fluffiness of the original. (We had reasonable success with a commercial product called Coco Whip, but our local Shop-Rite no longer seems to carry it.) But if we can't, at least we'll have some way to enjoy a reasonable facsimile of our favorite fool while the raspberries last. And, since our honeyberries are just starting to hit peak ripeness, my dream of a honeyberry fool might even become a reality.