Thursday, June 9, 2011

Almond Breeze Freeze

I had a container of Almond Breeze - an almond milk - left from a previous project. This one was chocolate flavored. And I needed to do something with it.

I decided to make a frozen dessert out of it. Like ice cream, but obviously a dairy-free dessert isn't ice cream, so I named it Almond Breeze Freeze.

Right off the bat, Almond Breeze is thinner than milk, so I knew I wanted to thicken it a bit before I froze it. I decided to use eggs as my thickener, sort of like custard-based ice creams.

It didn't thicken to a custard consistency, but it was a thicker than what I started with.

The resulting dessert isn't as icy as a granita, but it's not as rich and creamy as an ice cream. It has a thinner mouthfeel than ice cream, for lack of a better description. It's more like a "light" ice cream that's made with lower-fat dairy products. Do they still sell ice milk? That's sort of what it's like.

Adding a heavy non-dairy creamer might be an option for some folks, but most of those are thickened with all sort of odd stuff. I decided to go a more basic route, and I'm pretty pleased with the result.

This isn't going to replace my favorite ice cream recipe, but it's an interesting frosty dessert, and perfect for anyone who needs to stay away from dairy products.

Almond Breeze Freeze

1 quart chocolate-flavored almond milk
1/2 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vanilla

Combine the almond milk, sugar, egg yolks, and salt in a heavy-bottomed pan. Whisk until combined. Heat on medium heat, stirring as needed, until the mixture thickens. This doesn't get thick like a custard, but it will be thicker than when you started. It's fine if you get a few bubbles breaking to the surface, but you don't want it to boil. Take it off the heat, add the vanilla, and stir to combine

Pour the mixture through a strainer (to catch any curdled bits of egg) and into a storage container. Cover and refrigerate until fully chilled - several hours or overnight.

Churn in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer directions. Serve immediately or store in the freezer.
Yum

2 comments:

Jen said...

mmm this look nummy. I bet it's very nutty from the almond milk...

CatBoy said...

I'm going to try this soon. I made one recently where you cooked a small amount of the milk with cornstarch and added the resulting "slurry" to the balance of the ingredients. It was supposed to add the body you miss in not using cream; it was like was ice milk but with the emphasis on the ice part. The texture was decent enough for immediate use (I had a sample), but when I served it the next day it was almost brittle in texture.

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