Having finally gone pretty much totally non-dairy (I still snitch on candy bars) I started to miss a few things (definitely NOT the gross feeling of not being able to digest dairy though...!) one of them being ice cream. Over the years my Mom has tried all kinds of different non-dairy ice creams but liked very few of them. She always said they tasted "beany" and they never had that great of a texture. She has gone to making her own ice cream out of non-dairy whip. It tastes pretty good but it's positively loaded with chemicals and partially hydrogenated whatevers, which I really don't enjoy putting in my body. "Well what the heck!" I told myself one day, "Why can't I just make a custard base from soy milk and put that in the ice cream maker?"- My Mom makes chocolate pudding from soy milk all the time, why not ice cream? I tried it this week and I'll say that I am rather satisfied with the result. It feels like ice cream and looks like ice cream- I can't say that it tastes like ice cream because it really tasted like chocolate- because I put tons of chocolate in it- but I'm sure if one scraped a vanilla bean, one would get a taste very comparable to vanilla ice cream. Note that this is a NON-DAIRY recipe- not a vegan recipe.
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar (I used brown sugar)
2 cups soy milk
Flavoring of your choice (1/2- 1 teaspoon of vanilla, 1/2 teaspoon of peppermint extract, baking chocolate or cocoa power, 1 scraped vanilla bean, the possibilities are endless! You're a non-dairy baker, I know you have lots of practice being creative...!)
Heat the soy milk in a saucepan until it's hot- but not bubbling- just so when you put your finger in you snap back and go "ow!"
Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a separate bowl. I got fancy and decided to like whip them so they got all thick and light yellow- but I really don't think you need to do that, just make sure the sugar and yolks are really well blended.
When the milk is hot pour a little into the egg mixture to temper the egg yolks while whisking and get them warm before you pour the whole mixture back into the sauce pan of hot milk. Always keep mixing- not vigorously- but just so that everything gets blended nicely. If you don't temper the yolks before you put them into the hot milk the mixture will curdle and you'll get nasty chunks of cooked egg- and yes- you will need to start over.
Return the mixture to the heat and cook until the mixture coats whatever you're mixing with (supposedly everybody mixes with wooden spoons and always says "until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon"- but I don't mix with wooden spoons... I could really tell it was ready based on how it was sticking to the whisk- if you don't know what it looks like, look up how to make real ice cream and you'll see- you want the mixture to be like, well, melted ice cream, and not like pudding.) It should really only take a few minutes, if that- plus this is when your egg yolks get cooked. I always get really impatient at this point and throw in some flour to help thicken it. I don't think it really makes a difference, but you can throw in like a teaspoon of flour if you want to be like me.
Remove from the heat and stir in your flavoring.
You MUST chill your mixture before you put it in the ice cream maker. So put it in a bowl in the refrigerator for 2 or 3 hours.
You also kind of have to have an ice cream maker- I was always one of those kids who just whimpered "It's not fair" when people made home make ice cream on TV and said "Well, just pop it into your ice cream maker and voila!" because we didn't have one, and neither of my parents drank coffee so we couldn't even do the roll-the-coffee-can stunt. My Mom got one last year though and let me tell you- it's so worth it.
So, one more think people can't feel bad for me about. I am holding that this lactose intolerance is a party suffering. Praised be Jesus Christ!
