Cashew-based peanut butter fudge vegan ice cream

It’s based upon the cashew-based chocolate ice cream recipe from Jeff Rogers’ Vice Cream: Gourmet Vegan Desserts. Before getting Vice Cream, I never would have considered making ice cream from cashews. Talk about decadent! For this dish, I basically made the recipe slightly less sweet and more chocolatey, and swirled in some natural peanut butter and dark chocolate fudge sauce (any chocolate sauce would work) just before putting it in the freezer to ripen.What makes this ice cream stand apart from others I’ve made is the presentation. I usually store and serve ice cream in a deeper and narrower container; this is the first

A cool, refreshing topping for vegan waffles

time I’ve put it into a relatively wide and shallow container. I think it makes it look a bit fancier if you’ve got colorful swirls or other types of toppings in it. It almost gives it the feel of a frozen cake. Perhaps this will inspire others to serve their homemade vegan ice cream in an even fancier way!

I also give my sister, Sherry, credit for inspiration on this. On one of her visits a few years ago, I asked what flavor of homemade ice cream she’d like. The clear answer was peanut butter fudge. I discovered how fun it was to make it however peanut buttery and deep chocolately I wanted, and this remains one of my favorite flavor combinations as well.

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup vegan margarine
• 1/4 cup soymilk or other nondairy milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients except the vanilla extract in a small saucepan. Stir constantly and briskly over medium heat until half a minute after it begins to boil. Continue to scrape the bottom to incorporate any dry cocoa and keep it from burning. Immediately remove from heat and stir in the vanilla extract. Don’t eat it all before you have a chance to spoon some onto a waffle!

• 1/2 cup peanut butter (may be smooth or crunchy)
• 1/2 cup agave nectar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Place all ingredients in a small saucepan and warm over low heat, stirring constantly. Continue 1 to 3 minutes, or until peanut butter is melted and mixture is well-blended and thoroughly heated. Spoon over your favorite vegan waffle, and do a little dance around the table. To add tartness and texture, top with thinly-sliced fresh apple.

While waffles themselves aren’t generally good when they’re cold, they can go very well with cold toppings. Here are a few easy suggestions for making your vegan waffles a cool and refreshing dairy-free summer treat.

• When making waffles in the summer, make them in larger batches and freeze them. Next time you’re craving a waffle, you don’t have to spend much time in the kitchen near the hot iron. Just pop them into the toaster. If your iron makes round waffles, just don’t forget to break them into quarters before freezing so they fit into the toaster.
• If you’re craving a waffle with fruit, don’t bake the fruit into the waffle or cook it into the syrup. Keep it cool and fresh. Make a big bowl of fruit salad, and chill it to make a delicious waffle topping. This is particularly great to do this time of year, when fresh fruit is in abundance in many more locations–and local usually means fresher and tastier. The fresh blueberries from our local CSA farm share have been excellent this year!
• Use soy ice cream or sorbet, if you want it to be a little healthier, cold soy yogurt on top of the waffles. What I really enjoy is a “waffle ice cream sandwich”–two waffle quarters with some vegan ice cream in between. This is particularly good with some of the dessert waffles on this site.
• If you like chilled avocado, guacamole, or hummus, those can also add a cool twist to a waffle.
• The other day I even had the crazy idea of making waffle-shaped ice cubes or frozen orange juice-sicles! Yeah, I know I think about waffles a bit too much sometimes. However, none of our waffle makers have removable grids, and we don’t have one of those old-fashioned waffle makers that you use over a gas flame or campfire. The latter probably wouldn’t fit into our freezer with the long handle anyway. Oh, well… If you’re feeling adventurous and give this a try, let me know!

While she hasn’t had time to do a “taste bud confirmation” of any of the pairings either, Jo kindly suggested a number of possibilities. If you also own (or buy) a copy of Saucy and try any of these out before I do, please leave your comments and let me know how they worked for you.

Vegan Orange Basil Cornmeal Waffles: Orange-Tahini Dressing, Creamy Orange-Sesame Dressing, Miso-Citrus Sauce, Basil Red Pepper Sauce, Fennel, Orange & Walnut Sauce, Orange Aioli

Cheddar Cheesy Vegan Waffles Recipe: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cheese Sauce, Simple Cilantro Sauce, Red Pepper & Pignolia Sauce, Sun-Dried Tomato & Spinach Pesto, Cucumber-Dill Dressing

Mexican Refried Bean & Cornmeal Vegan Waffles: Simple Cilantro Sauce, Yellow Ocher Vinaigrette, Del Sol Dressing, Chili Bean Sauce, Spicy Red Bean Sauce, Peppercorn Ranch Dressing

Yeast-Powered Vegan Waffles: Creamy Tarragon Dressing, Tahini Tarragon Dressing, Hummus Sauce, Gee Whiz Sauce, Green Olive & Nori Dressing, Creamy Pesto Sauce

Ingredients

• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 3/4 cup coconut milk (1 can)
• 3/4 cup plain unsweetened soy milk
• 1/2 cup plain soy creamer (if you don’t have this on hand, you can replace this with soy milk–it just won’t we quite as thick and rich)
• 2 t pure vanilla (The non-alcoholic kind is preferable as it doesn’t inhibit
  freezing, but can be somewhat hard to find.)
• 3 T oil (I use canola–it’s among the healthier oils, and we keep
  it in stock for things like vegan chocolate chip cookies and
  waffles.) If you’re not replacing the soy creamer with soy milk, you can experiment with reducing or eliminating this–but it does make it a little richer!
• a tiny pinch of salt (I used 1/8 tsp)
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• just under 1/8 t cayenne pepper
• 1 t cinnamon

Directions

1. Blend the above in a blender for a few minutes so it gets really creamy.

• If all of your ingredients were cold before blending, you can proceed to step 2.
• If all of your ingredients were room temperature before blending, put the mixture into the freezer for at least 30 minutes or the refrigerator for at least 90 minutes to bring the temperature down. (It may take much longer than this.)

2. Put the mixture in your ice cream maker and freeze according to the directions.
3. You can enjoy this as “soft serve” when the ice cream maker is finished or freeze it in your freezer until it gets a harder consistency.

• Homemade vegan ice cream makes an excellent waffle topping! A few sources for this include Agnes L.’s vegan ice cream recipe blog , and Jeff Rogers’ exciting Vice Cream vegan ice cream cookbook . We picked up a small ice cream maker from a neighborhood moving sale, and went to town. Even though we have 5 ice cream shops within a mile of our house, I prefer to make the cashew-based ice creams–the 2008 waffle party will likely feature a dark chocolate/peanut butter combo.

• Vegan cheese alternatives, as found in The Uncheese Cookbook–my favorites there include the relatively easy-to-make “Parmezano” powder as well as the more complex but excellent-tasting “crock cheeze.”.

• Homemade vegan whipped cream alternatives

• Homemade chocolate syrups (I use a recipe that combines cocoa powder, sugar, soymilk, Earth Balance, and vanilla, and sometimes add amaretto, mint, or other flavorings)

• Bean-based dishes

• Homemade hummus (there are a ton of recipes on the internet for this–it’s fairly easy to make in a blender) and other bean-based dips

• Any type of nut butter (e.g., peanut, almond, cashew), purchased pre-made or make-your-own by simply putting in the food processor

• Most types of fruit, both fresh and dried (don’t forget things like dried coconut)

• Soy yogurt (can be mixed with fruit)

• Granola

• Chocolate chips (may be melted to make a sauce; many but not all semisweet chocolate chips are dairy-free)

• Vegan cream cheese alternatives, such as Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese (the unhydrogenated version, w/o trans fats)–this also goes well with fruits such as pineapple, strawberries and pears

• Soy ice cream (e.g., we like Turtle Mountain’s Soy Delicious Purely Decadent varieties and Temptation vegan ice cream)

• Store-bought vegan whipped cream alternatives

• Sweeteners, including agave nectar, powdered sugar (may be mixed with cinnamon and/or cocoa) and turbinado sugar)

• Store-bought meat substitutes, such as Smart Ground ground beef subsitute made from soy, or seitan (meat substitute with a wheat gluten base). You can simply sautee them in olive oil and/or soy sauce and add your preferred combination of spices, onion, etc., or you can sautee them in a pre-made vegan cooking sauce (many Indian and Asian varieties are available–just check the label). Additionally, many vegan meat substitutes come pre-seasoned, so all you have to do is sautee them. You can also simply buy a package of vegan veggie burgers and crumble them up before sauteeing them for the same effect.

• Store-bought hummus

• Beans with spices–for example, you might heat some chickpeas in a pre-made indian spice blend, or add cumin, cilantro and other spices to refried beans (note that many refried bean mixes incorporate animal fat and lard, so check the label to make sure it’s actually free of animal products)

• Vegan chilis (many are simply-bean based, and many also incorporate textured vegetable protein to emulate beef)

• Rice with spices, or incorporated into a pre-made vegan cooking sauce–there are many interesting varieties of rice available with different textures and colors, including red, wehani, and wild rice. If you have a rice cooker, such a dish will be minimal effort.