Baruch’s Chocolate Banana Peanut Butter Parve Ice Cream.

Now if that wasn’t a shout out, I don’t know what is. Baruch – this one is for you, that’s why it’s named after you. Yeah it’s an ice cream, but it is parve, so here’s lookin at you kid big bro.

I saw this recipe on line, and immediately decided I wanted to try and make it for shabbos. I mean how cool would it be to serve up some amazing parve ice cream shabbos lunch, only to tell my dear patrons that I made it. That’s what I wanted to happen, only the ice cream wasn’t a smashing success like I had dreamed it would be. On a scale of “Yuck to Wow” I would say it was an “Eh.” The scientist in me (that’s right, I’m a scientist) was a little more pleased, because the consistency was pretty darn good, but the gastronome in me was not so happy.

If you think about something that freezes, say ice cubes. You put water in the freezer and it freezes into one solid mass, no creamy consistency there. However, take some cream and what not, throw it into an ice cream maker, and voila, you have a creamy consistency. But when making ice cream with the normal ingredients (say, in a pralines and cream recipe…), you have your milk stuff (fats and non-fat stuff), sweeteners, and the water (which is in the milk)…so milk plays a pretty crucial role in the ice cream making process, especially to get the proper consistency (I’ve spelled consistency now like 5 times so far, and still can’t spell it right…thank you spell check).

Slight scientific detour – [Granted, the difference between throwing water into an ice cube tray, and throwing any mixture into an ice cream maker is the ability to have the water (in the ice cream) freeze at a slower rate. When water freezes, it expands, and if you just let the water sit there it will expand as much as it can. However, put it in an ice cream maker, which is constantly turning, the water only freezes when it it’s contact with the freezing element (in our case the bowl), and the crystal forms very slowly, and will form very small. This is a good thing.]

Ok, so even though the ice cream maker itself is really important, it’s also very important what gets thrown in there, and making it parve is a challenge. This recipe called for soy milk, soy yogurt (which I at one point saw in trader joes, but couldn’t find…more on that in a bit), bananas, cocoa powder, agave syrup (from trader joes), and some peanut butter (exact recipe below). It seemed to have what an ice cream needed, some proteins and fat (from the soy milk and yogurt), some sweetener (from agave), and some stabilizer (bananas…now I pretty much just made all this up…I have no idea if they’re actually stabilizers, or if soy milk has protein and fat…but hey, it sounds good rite?), so it would seem that the consistency should come out good.

Here’s where it went down hill. Trader joe’s didn’t have soy yogurt, so in my mind that meant, I needed something else to thicken it up a little more, and I decided instead of putting in the recommended 1 banana, lets put in another 1/2 of a banana.

I put said one and a half bananas in blender

combined all the other ingredients (cocoa, soy milk, and agave syrup)

By the way this is what the agave syrup looks like:

and put it all in the blender, and mixed it up, and put it into the ice cream maker, and let it churn for 25 minutes. And in the last few minutes i dropped in peanut butter, a drop at a time.

Like I said earlier, the consistency was pretty good, and pretty similar to regular ice cream, which for me is a feat in and of itself. However, it was too banana-ey, and all in all the flavor was a little bland. Where ice cream has a creamy, milky, fatty, rich flavor, this had a watery, bland, banana-ey, flavor.

It definitely would’ve been better without that extra half a banana, but I wonder how much better it would be if it had soy yogurt. In the end of the day, it’s parve ice cream, and if your lactose intolerant (Baruch!) well then your better off making some steak (or buying soy ice cream from trader joe’s)

I think a part of the problem is that I need to learn a little more about ice cream, and it’s properties.

Until then my fellow comrades, I’ll be in the pediatrics department.

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