Vegan Mofo #12 - Taymer’s Pina Colada Ice Cream...

Vegan Mofo #12 - Taymer’s Pina Colada Ice Cream 

The Region - The Caribbean
The Book - Caribbean Vegan
The Author - Taymer Mason
The Recipe - Pina Colada Ice Cream
Page # 202
Difficulty - Easy
Duration - The active time on this recipe is about 15 minutes, but it requires some before hand prep. Once the ice cream base is made it needs to refrigerate overnight, I actually made the ice cream base very early in the morning and then popped it in the ice cream maker in the evening. Once it’s gone through the ice cream maker for 30 minutes it needs to freeze for 3 hours. Since I like soft serve ice cream I skipped the freezing step.

Okay, it’s finally time to get into the Island spirit, with a Caribbean inspired dessert. This recipe comes from Taymer Mason’s book “Caribbean Vegan” which is a book I’ve owned for a while now, but don’t use very often. This recipe in particular is one I’d been coveting for some time - probably as long as I’ve had the book - and I never made it because up until last year I completely forgot I owned an ice cream maker. I know, how do you forget something like that? Well, it was a wedding gift and it got lost in the shuffle somehow and at the time that I received it while I was a pretty good cook I wasn’t so experimental. Certainly it had never occurred to me to make home-made ice cream back in those days. These days it’s all different, becoming vegan has inspired all sorts of new creative culinary pursuits and I love making things from scratch from condiments to soy milk, to tofu, and even ice cream. Since I knew I wanted to include The Caribbean as a region I explore during this mofo, I thought there was no better time then now to finally try this delicious pina colada ice cream. Even if summer is only a few days away from being over.

Now, some of you might think making homemade ice cream is a chore, or that it’s laborious, but really it’s not. Not if you have an ice cream maker anyway. All you really do is spend a few minutes whipping together a base, you let it cool, and then you pop it into the ice cream maker and it does all the rest of the work for you. When it’s done you can eat it straight out of the machine provided you like soft serve. If however you prefer a more frozen ice cream it’s generally a good rule of thumb to freeze the finished product for 2-4 hours. Once you get the hang of this little dance making ice cream at home is fun and easy, and out of all the ice creams I made over the summer I’d have to say that Taymer’s Pina Colada is probably my hands down favorite. I just really love the mixture of flavors, and they all come together so nicely.

The base is pretty simple, non-dairy milk, non-dairy creamer, arrowroot powder - I used cornstarch -, coconut milk, sugar and coconut extract. Then you stir in white rum - I used Captain Morgan cause that’s all I had - crushed pineapple, and candied cherries. I also didn’t have candied cherries but I used jarred maraschino cherries that I blotted with a paper towel to remove the excess juice. The recipe also calls for Angostura bitters which I didn’t have and couldn’t find and so I just left that out.

Really this ice cream is so superb, it’s better then any store bought ice cream I’ve ever had, vegan or otherwise, and the craziest part is that I don’t even like Pina Coladas! No really, I don’t. There’s just something about a pina colada I can’t stand, it’s a strange taste, and texture, but I love pina colada flavored things which is bizarre. Anyway, a scoop or two of this flavorful ice cream will make you feel like you’re in the tropics. I know I’ll be making this again and again.

PS: Since we ate this straight away as a soft serve it didn’t photograph real well in a bowl. So since we were eating it with a pie I made I decided to photograph it topped onto the pie. For anyone curious the pie in question is Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’s Purple Plum Pie with Crumble Topping from “Color Me Vegan” and seriously it’s one of the best pies I’ve ever had. So damn delicious, and it tasted great combined with the tropical flavors of the ice cream.