cookie dough ice cream pops
A few weeks ago I had the idea of chocolate dipped cookie dough ice cream in my head and I couldn’t let it go. After the red velvet ice cream turned out so well, I thought I would give it a shot. The hardest part about this recipe was choosing the mold. I initially was going to go low tech and just DIY something, but at the last minute I realized it would be a lot less complicated to use a mold. I settled on these round pop molds
One of my biggest complaints with cookie dough ice cream is that there’s never enough cookie dough so I dig it all out and end up with a container of craggy vanilla. Here you can add as much as you please. Plus, because the cookie dough is vegan, there’s no worries about uncooked eggs.
These are a pretty decadent treat, so I was fine with only having a few, which meant I had leftovers of everything. You could easily make more with this recipe.
Vegan Cookie Dough Ice Cream Bars
non-dairy vanilla ice cream
chocolate chip cookie dough
chocolate dip (recipe below)
Set your ice cream out to soften (but don’t let it melt). Prepare your cookie dough. I recommend using mini-chips if you can, so it’s not super crunchy. In a separate bowl, mix equal parts cookie dough and ice cream. You can mix it as much as you like but make sure you still have some chunks of cookie dough. Fill your popsicle molds and freeze for about 4 hours, or until they are firm enough to remove from the molds.
While the pops are freezing, line a cookie sheet with wax paper. Then prepare the chocolate dip. Full disclosure here, I wasn’t totally satisfied with this chocolate dip. It tasted fine, but didn’t have the crunch I was looking for. Next time I’ll try omitting the soy milk.
Chocolate Dip
1/4 cup soy milk
4 oz chocolate chips
1 Tbs coconut oil
In a small sauce pan, bring the soy milk to a boil. Remove from heat and mix with chocolate chips and coconut oil until melted and smooth. Let cool, but not solidify.
Remove ice cream pops from the molds and dip in chocolate. Place the chocolate dipped ice cream pops on the cookie sheet and freeze for 1/2 and hour to an hour, until the chocolate hardens. Enjoy!
vegan red velvet ice cream
I’ve been kicking around ideas for this recipe in my mind for oh, I don’t know, two years now. It’s sort of ridiculous. The curious thing is that when I finally went to procure the ingredients, I found out that Whole Foods had discontinued carrying Mimicream, my go to base for making ice cream. So I came up with a new plan of making my own cashew cream. The end result was a decadent ice cream that’s very similar to a custard and extremely delicious.
RED VELVET ICE CREAM
1 1/4 cup cashews *soaked overnight
water for blending
3/4 cup sugar
2 Tbsp cocoa powder
1 Tbsp arrowroot or corn starch
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp white vinegar
1/4-1/2 tsp black salt (or sea salt)
red food dye (optional)
Put cashews in a blender and cover with water. Blend until smooth. Add remaining ingredients and blend again until fully incorporated. If the mixture has heated up in the blender, refrigerate until cool. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s directions. It will be on the softer side, so you can put in a sealed container in the freezer to firm it up more if you like.
If you don’t have an ice cream maker, you can put the mixture in a sealed container in the freezer. Stir the freezing mixture every half hour until frozen.
halloweens
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Hope everyone has a spooky All Hallows Eve filled with candy, black cats, pumpkins and ghosts. And possibly a little bit of pumpkin spice ice cream.
New England Vegan
A few weeks ago we visited New England for a dear friend’s wedding (have I mentioned this already? I think perhaps I have). It was so nice to be out in the country and around trees and quiet. Mostly it was nice to spend time celebrating with old friends. We were able to drive around in the days following and explore a few states I’d never been to. I wasn’t too sure what the vegan choices would be like in more secluded areas, but we managed to find some great restaurants all over. Here’s a little round up of where we went:
First, we found the lovely Riverbend Cafe, conveniently located across the street from the motel we stayed at in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. We were surprised to find a spot with vegan french toast, not to mention bagels and tofu cream cheese. I had some super tasty oatmeal with peaches and brown sugar. The setting here was idyllic and the food was great. Plus we got to spend the morning catching up with Agatha which made the whole thing extra awesome.
Randomly, we stumbled upon a farmers market where there happened to be some goats hanging out. I love goats!
As our travels continued, Shawn once again proved he is the vegan pizza finding master. I had us routed to a spot in Northampton, Massachusetts which ended up being closed. He tracked down Pizzeria Paradiso which not only had vegan pizza, they used Follow Your Heart, which made me extra happy.
In Keene, New Hampshire we stopped in at Country Life, a Seventh Day Adventist buffet spot. Even though it was sort of vegan 1.0, it was really good, and felt really fulfilling. They also had a cute little market.
Concord, New Hampshire had some great vegan spots. First we stopped in at Hermanos Cocina Mexicana which, while not a vegan restaurant, had some superb vegan options. They had some spicy seitan for their burritos, plus all the fun stuff like soy sour cream and vegan cheese. I had some truly amazing enchiladas.
Also in Concord was Cafe Indigo. We stopped here for a great lunch and picked up a ton of sweets. A giant box of cookies, blondies and more for about $10. It was awesome. I had a wonderful ToFishy sandwich and Shawn had their infamous Rachael, a vegan reuben, both of which we loved.
Our last stop was in Boston. We ran into the Clover food truck and picked up some chickpea fritters and a soy BLT. It was a pretty good snack for a hot afternoon in the park.
Last but not least, we hit up a double whammy of vegan pizza and ice cream. First, Piece o’ Pie served us a fantastic margarita pizza with tofu ricotta, which kept me fed for our entire flight home. I think if we could have stayed longer, Shawn would have tried all the pizzas here.
Right next door was FoMu, a decadent vegan ice cream shop. It took forever for me to choose a flavor (I went with espresso) while Shawn went all out with a sundae. They had some really neat flavors and I wish I could have tried more.
Okay so there were a few more spots along the way, but this post is too long already! And yet there were still places we missed. I guess we’ll just have to go back.
ice cream snowballs
One of the people I’m saddest I never was able to meet is Shawn’s mother, Sharon. She passed away a few years before Shawn and I met, and though I was never able to know her, I feel that she still has an impact on our life together. Shawn always tells me stories about her and it’s easy to see how much she did for her five children. She was a talented cook and went out of her way to make celebrations special. When Shawn and some of his siblings went vegan, she would adapt her recipes to make vegan versions.
Often times, Shawn will tell me something she used to make and we’ll try to recreate it. These snowballs fall into that category. A simple to assemble treat that is exponentially more tasty because it is fun to eat. With warmer weather rolling around (maybe?) I can see we’ll be making more of these.
Start with a scoop of your favorite non-dairy ice cream.
Roll it around in some coconut. Use your hands. It’s not even that messy.
Place on a cookie sheet and freeze for 10-30 minutes. That’s it! You now have a snowball.
Now personally, I’m not a fan of coconut, but I didn’t want to be left out of the snowball fun, so I made some “dirty snowballs” with crumbled cookies instead.
Perfect.
Thank you Sharon for still being an inspiration, even though we never met. Mostly though, thank you for raising such an amazing son who I adore so much.
