Ice cream without the cream

Ever since Brian and I went off dairy for most purposes in 2018, we've been trying to find a reasonable dairy-free alternative to ice cream. You can, of course, buy nondairy frozen desserts, and we've tried several, but we never found one we loved enough to justify the fairly substantial price tag. And the homemade versions we've tried, such as iced coconut milk and plum whip, didn't quite satisfy that ice-cream craving. They were cold and sweet, but they didn't have the creamy smoothness of the real thing. 

So, this week, Brian decided to go for broke and try making a frozen dessert from coconut cream. This stuff is much richer than coconut milk, with around 83 grams of fat per cup, putting it roughly on a par with heavy cream—and it's even higher in saturated fat than real cream. So this vegan dessert would not be, by any stretch of the imagination, a healthy alternative, but he wasn't going for healthy; he was going for satisfying. If the recipe succeeded in giving us the creamy texture we wanted, we could always tweak it later to see how much we could lower the fat content without losing that smoothness.

Another thing Brian thought might help with the texture would be to add more sugar. As a trained chemist, Brian knew that having sugar dissolved in a liquid inhibits the formation of ice crystals, which might prevent this dessert from turning into a solid block of ice the way our iced coconut milk did. The problem there was that the original iced coconut milk recipe was already a bit on the sweet side for me, and adding more sugar would probably make it outright cloying.

However, he thought of a work-around for this problem. We happened to have a container of allulose sweetener in our pantry, left over from my carb-counting period. Allulose is a naturally occurring sugar, but the body doesn't absorb it like other sugars. Thus, it has about two-thirds of table sugar's sweetness with only one-tenth of the calories, and it doesn't spike your insulin levels. Brian figured that by replacing sugar with allulose and scaling up the amount by 50 percent, he'd get roughly the same level of sweetness in a more sugar-saturated solution.

So, Brian took the original coconut milk ice cream recipe from Chocolate Covered Katie and began making modifications. First, he scaled it down by about one-third to fit our new, smaller ice cream maker. Then he replaced the coconut milk with coconut cream and the sugar with allulose. And last, he added cocoa powder to temper the coconut flavor and keep it from being overpowering. 

After mixing up this base and chilling it overnight, he put it in the ice cream maker and turned it on. And it didn't take him long to notice that this coconut-cream mixture was behaving differently from the original coconut-milk base. Not only was it not forming ice crystals, it didn't seem to be freezing at all. It had a fairly thick, smoothie-like texture when it went into the ice cream maker, and after half an hour of mixing, it still had that same smoothie-like texture. Only around the very edges of the bowl did it show any signs of solidifying.

But he wasn't prepared to give up yet. Remembering that the coconut-milk ice cream had turned from a soft-serve consistency to a solid block once he put it in the freezer, he decided to do the same with this mixture. And after a full day of freezing, he discovered that it had indeed firmed up—and in the right way. Instead of freezing solid like the coconut milk, it had developed a smooth, scoopable texture, very similar to a high-fat premium ice cream. And, as we'd hoped, it was almost perfectly smooth, with no detectable ice crystals.

The flavor was pretty good, too. Naturally, it was very coconut-forward, but the distinctive bittersweet note of the cocoa balanced out that nuttiness. The level of sweetness was just about right. Brian described the flavor as having a "bright" note from the coconut milk, but I couldn't detect it. I did find the taste a little on the salty side, but that's easily explained by the fact that Brian couldn't figure out how to reduce the eighth of a teaspoon of salt from the original recipe to one-twelfth of a teaspoon, so he'd just left the amount unchanged. If he took it down to an imprecise pinch, I think the flavor would be just about perfect.

So, on the whole, I'd say this iced coconut cream is our most successful vegan ice cream to date. We'll most likely continue to fiddle with the recipe and see how much of the coconut cream we can replace with soy milk to tone down the richness while still keeping it as smooth as possible. Also, next time we might try skipping the ice cream maker, which didn't seem to alter the texture much, and just putting the coconut-cream base straight in the freezer. But I think the recipe in its current form is good enough to be worth posting in full:

ICED CHOCOLATE COCONUT CREAM

• 1 cup coconut cream
• ⅓ cup allulose
• Small pinch salt
• 2 Tbsp cocoa powder
• ½ tsp vanilla
• ¼ cup soy milk

Mix all ingredients in a saucepan and heat until allulose is dissolved. Refrigerate mixture overnight, then chill in an ice cream maker for half an hour. Freeze until solid.  

According to the recipe tool from My Fitness Pal, one-quarter of this recipe (a smallish scoop) contains 128 calories, 13 grams fat including 10 grams saturated fat, 19 grams carbs including 1 gram fiber and 1 gram sugar, and 2 grams protein. However, most sources indicate that the carbs from the allulose shouldn't really count toward the total, so really the carb count for this dessert is only about 2 grams—low enough for even keto dieters.

Now we're cooking without gas

For some years now, we've been waffling over the question of when to start electrifying our home. Not adding electricity to it, that is, but replacing our old gas-burning appliances with electric ones. It's a bit of an ecofrugal dilemma, because electrical appliances are clearly better for the planet, but not better for our budget. According to the Personal Electrification Planner tool from Rewiring America, replacing all our gas appliances (boiler, water heater, dryer, and stove) with electric ones would cost us over $15,000, after tax credits—and on top of that, it would add an extra $200 per year to our utility bills.

And the cost isn't the only challenge—particularly where our gas stove is concerned. It may be old, inefficient, and polluting, but it also works during a power outage, something no electric stove can do. I was reluctant to give up that fail-safe for the sake of a possibly faster, possibly cleaner cooking experience. So, while I figured we'd have to upgrade to an induction stove whenever this one bit the dust (which, considering its age, could be any day now), I wasn't keen to junk it any sooner than I had to.

But recently, I realized there was a middle ground. Rather than replace this stove outright, we could supplement it with a stand-alone induction burner. This would only cost around $100 and wouldn't require any rewiring of the kitchen. We could use the induction burner for most of our cooking tasks, while keeping the gas as a backup. It could step in during a power outage and also handle any job that called for multiple burners and/or a piece of cookware that wasn't induction-compatible.

I consulted several sources for recommendations on which induction burner to buy, and all of them had good things to say about the $110 Duxtop 9600LS. However, the slightly older and cheaper Duxtop 9100MC had most of the same features, and the ones it lacked—like touch-screen controls and a 10-hour timer—were ones I didn't think we'd have much use for. Plus, its slightly larger size looked like it might come in handy for our big Dutch oven. So I ordered that one for a mere $88.49 (including tax), and two days later, it arrived on our doorstep. We plunked it down on the counter right next to the stove, plugged it in, and we were ready to cook.

So far, we've used it for just a handful of tasks: boiling water, making pasta, cooking an omelet, and simmering a pot of soup. Although the controls are quite simple (just set set a pot on it, turn it on, and push the buttons to adjust the heat up or down), we faced a bit of a learning curve in figuring out what settings to use. On high heat (9 or 10 out of 10), it boiled a half-full teakettle noticeably faster than the gas stove, yet it seemed to take longer to bring a full pot of water up to a rolling boil for cooking pasta. Brian also discovered that this heat setting, which he thought was comparable to what he would use for an omelet on the gas stove, is decidedly too high for this purpose on the induction burner. The omelet came out rather torched, and he had to haul out our giant fan to clear the smoke out of the kitchen. (So much for improving our indoor air quality.)

This revealed another weakness of the induction-plus-gas setup: With the burner sitting next to the range, the hood can't clear away steam and fumes. We couldn't fix this by setting the burner on top of the stove because of the risk that we might accidentally turn on the flame. We thought maybe we could get around that by removing the knobs of the stove burners, but there was another problem: according to the instruction manual, the burner couldn't be placed directly on any metal surface. And putting a board on top of the existing stove grates wouldn't work either, because the burner also couldn't rest on any surface that could be flammable. 

Eventually, though, we found a work-around. We still had a few of the big porcelain tiles left over from our downstairs bathroom renovation, and it turned out that one of those was just large enough for the induction burner to fit on. So, to cook the soup, Brian set the tile on top of the stove burners, set the induction burner on top of the tile, and removed the stove knobs to eliminate any risk of accidents. This allowed the soup to simmer away merrily on top of the burner while the range hood vented away the steam. 

Unfortunately, we can't just leave this setup in place full-time, since the induction burner can't be sitting on top of the range while the oven is in use. Instead, we've stashed the ceramic tile in the cabinet underneath our big cast-iron skillet, ready to grab whenever we want to cook an actual dish on the burner. If we're just using it to boil a kettle of water, it can stay next to the stove instead.

It's too early to say yet whether this little burner will save us energy or money. We plugged it into our Kill-a-Watt meter just to get an idea of its energy use, and we found that it draws 7.5 amps and 850 watts on the 5 setting and 11 amps, 1.25 kilowatts on 9. But we don't have much idea how that compares to the amount of energy our gas stove uses. We'll check and see if there's any noticeable change in our gas or electric use on our next utility bill, but I suspect the difference will be too small to detect.

However, we have identified a couple of other advantages to using the induction burner. First, it's remarkably easy to adjust. We already knew that induction stoves were much more sensitive than regular electric ones, which take quite a long time to heat up or cool down when you change the temperature setting. But Brian thinks this one is actually easier to control than our gas stove. When he turns the knob on the gas stove to, say, 6, the actual size of the flame won't be exactly the same every time. It may sputter or waver, so its heat output won't be consistent. But if he sets the induction burner to 6, he knows he'll get exactly the same level of heat he got the last time, and it will be even across the entire surface of the pan.

Second, nearly all of that heat will get transferred directly to the contents of the pot. Little or none of it will dissipate into the surrounding air—a major perk during a hot summer like this. Even the pot handles and lids don't get nearly as hot on this induction burner as they do over a gas flame. When Brian cooked the omelet on this burner in our cast-iron skillet, the bottom of the pan got really hot (a bit too hot, in fact), but the handle was still cool enough to grasp with his bare hand. Likewise, I've noticed that when I boil the kettle on the induction burner, I don't need to use a pot holder to lift and pour from it the way I do when I heat it over gas.

So, while this little induction burner isn't going to replace our gas stove entirely, we suspect we'll be using it in future for the majority of our frying, boiling, and simmering. And, almost as important, it will provide a valuable fail-safe. We've known for some time that the gas range was nearing the end of its life; one of the buttons on its control panel has already failed, and if the next one to go out is the one that turns on the oven, that will be game over. But thanks to this little burner, we'll have something to cook on while we go through the process of finding a replacement—and making any necessary upgrades to our electrical system so we can get it installed.

Recipe of the Month: Mushroom Seitan Burgers

Last month, we tried a recipe for seitan burgers that was not a resounding success. The texture was just about perfect, satisfyingly chewy and able to hold up well on the grill. But the recipe's secret ingredient, raw beet, gave the flavor a note that was, to my taste, distinctly off-putting. 

When I inquired on the recipe site about substituting something else for the beet, one of the bloggers suggested sweet potato. Brian tried this version of the dish, and it did indeed work better, but it was sort of lacking in oomph. The burgers had the same meaty chew without the odd bitter flavor from the beets, but they also didn't have much flavor, period. None of the main ingredients—lentils, wheat gluten, sweet potato—had a strong enough taste to carry the dish.

However, Brian wasn't prepared to give up yet. While searching for ideas to replace the beet, I'd come across another seitan burger recipe that used black beans and mushrooms along with the seitan. Brian decided to combine these two recipes, substituting black beans for the lentils in the original dish and sauteed mushrooms for the raw beet. For a half-recipe, he used 7 ounces of raw mushrooms, which cooked down to about 3.5 ounces. He also decided, on the spur of the moment, to substitute tamari for the soy sauce in the original recipe, mainly because the soy sauce bottle was empty and he didn't feel like going downstairs to grab a new one.

This revised recipe was a vast improvement on either of the versions we'd tried before. The burgers were still hearty, chewy, and easy to grill, and the new combination of ingredients gave them a rich, earthy, savory flavor. If they had a fault, it was that they were a trifle on the dry side, not juicy like a real beef burger. That's a flaw we might be able to amend by adding a little more fat to the burgers, possibly by upping the amount of peanut butter in the mixture. 

But even as they are, these are far superior to any commercial plant-based burger we've ever tried to grill. They're also much more affordable than most. Based on a quick calculation, it looks like the half-sized batch we made cost us a total of $2.85, or about 71 cents per burger. And that's with the tamari, which is significantly costlier than soy sauce and probably doesn't make that big a difference to the taste. Switching back to soy sauce could knock it down to around 62 cents per burger; doubling the volume of peanut butter would increase that to around 67 cents. But no matter how you make them, they're less than one-third the cost of Impossible Burgers, which run around $2.25 per patty, and less than half the price of Morningstar Farms Grillers.

In short, these Mushroom Seitan Burgers are our new go-to protein for grilling. That's not to say we're planning to ditch our Soykebabs, which are quicker to prepare, or to give up on experimenting with ways to grill tofu. But with this burger recipe, we'll always have something to toss on the grill at a picnic or any other event where carnivores and herbivores mix. Indeed, I suspect that we might even be able to impress the carnivores with these burgers if we could persuade any of them to try one.

Gardeners' Holidays 2024: Summer Harvest

This past week has been brutally hot. Daytime highs have been consistently in the nineties, with soaking East Coast humidity on top of that. From Wednesday through Friday, we were under a heat advisory, warned to stay inside as much as possible as the heat index climbed into triple digits. By this afternoon, it was back down to a mere 98, but it still wasn't weather you'd want to spend any more time in than you had to.

Unless, of course, you're a plant. The ones in our garden are apparently just loving all this heat, yielding up a veritable cornucopia of veggies. On the first day of August, Brian braved the heat long enough to pick one largish zucchini, two cucumbers, one Carmen pepper, one Banana pepper, one Premio tomato, one San Marzano paste tomato, and 52 little Sun Gold tomatoes—and that's just one day's harvest.

To celebrate all this bounty, Brian made our favorite quinoa salad. This dish started out as the Couscous Salad from The Clueless Vegetarian, then morphed into kasha salad, and finally reached its pinnacle with chewy, protein-rich quinoa as the base. We eat this quite often, as it makes a useful catch-all for any leftover vegetables in the fridge that need to get used up before they go mushy. But this time, nearly all the veggies in it—cucumber, scallions, zucchini, parsley, two kinds of peppers, and two kinds of tomatoes—came from our own garden. The only exceptions were the garlic, which we have so far failed to produce a decent crop of, and the chick peas, which we've never attempted to grow.

Sadly, the one crop in our yard that isn't thriving in the summer heat is the plums. As far as we can tell, our plum trees tend to operate on a two-year cycle, giving us a bumper crop one year and essentially nothing the next. We have managed to harvest a handful of fruits off the Golden Gage tree, but only one off the Mount Royal and nothing at all from the Opal. And, to Brian's intense annoyance, we didn't even get to keep all of the fairly meager crop for ourselves. 

You see, last year, when our trees were simply loaded with fruit, some of our neighbors got into the habit of helping themselves right off the tree. We usually let this slide, but when one woman started not only eating them on the spot but filling up a bag, Brian went out and asked her to please stop it. She promptly apologized and insisted on paying for what she'd taken, so fair enough. 

But apparently she considered that by doing so, she had established her right to harvest our plums as long as she paid for them. So yesterday, he found the same woman outside, pocketing our Golden Gages and commenting on how meager the crop was. She gave us five bucks for what she'd picked, but frankly, we'd much rather have kept the plums for ourselves. It's one thing to share with our neighbors when the fruit is plentiful, but when the entire crop is maybe a few pounds' worth, we feel like we really should be entitled to first dibs.

Happily, there is a bright side on the fruit front. Our raspberry canes, having finished with their spring season, are already showing signs of gearing up for their fall crop. The canes toward the front of the bed are covered in little green berries, and one of them has even produced a couple of precocious fully ripe ones. So it won't be too long before we have fresh fruit available for the picking—and since the canes are as full of prickers as they are of fruit, we probably won't have to compete with any scavengers for the harvest.

And there's more good news: As I write this, a rainstorm is rolling in, bringing with it a much-needed respite from the heat. The climate being what is is, there will no doubt be further heat waves before summer is over, and most likely further setbacks in the garden too. But for now, between the crops in the garden, the crops on the horizon, and the welcome cool breezes blowing in through our windows, I'd say we have more cause for satisfaction with our outdoor lot than for disappointment.