Vegan MoFo 2019 - Day 20: Banana Butterscotch Pudding

For this week's 'veganising', I tried out a recipe I have wanted to have a go at for MANY years, since I saw Rachel Allen make it on the telly.


It's Bill Granger's Banana Butterscotch Pudding.


The reason I put this off for so long is I wasn't sure it'd work with any of the egg substitutes I'd used before. When I got a bottle of Just Egg from the US, I thought I'd maybe try that. But actually in the end I didn't, I just used a good old flax egg!


I made a few subs:
- I subbed a flax egg (1 tbsp. ground flax mixed with 3 tbsp. water) for the hen egg
- I subbed Oat Milk for the cow juice
- I subbed Naturli butter blocks for the dairy butter
- I also subbed self-raising flour for the plan flour + baking powder, as I'd run out of BP
- AND I used golden syrup; the link above says corn syrup, which isn't a thing in the UK and also, when Rachel Allen made it, she used golden syrup.

I was sceptical that this would work with the subs I made; I was worried I'd get no sauce, but as you can see from this pic - that was NOT the case:

There was a lot of sauce. The recipe said to serve it with vanilla ice cream, which I did. But the sauce was suuuuuper sweet and the Swedish glace ice cream I bought was really too sweet when it was all together! I would serve this with soya or oat cream next time and just a small amount of the sauce.

Overall it was pretty good but nothing special and really a bit too sweet for me! I think maybe adding a bit of salt to the sauce could help with that or using a bit less sugar and serving with cream instead of ice cream.

I do love a self-saucing pudding though - do you have a recipe for one you love? Let me know.

Laters

Sal xXx

Vegan MoFo: Thank Crunchie it's Ice Cream

Here is my ice cream post as promised. Brought to you from the tiniest laptop ever that I am using onsite to procrastinate.

I used to LOVE crunchie bars. I know they are dirty cadbury’s milk chocolate but they taste good and so when I found out that it is piss easy to make the honeycomb in the middle AND that the middle is nothing to do with honey and is, in fact, vegan, I knew I had to put this knowledge to good use.

Thus, this ice-cream recipe was born and let me tell ya, it is fucking awesome! It would be gorgeous just as a plain chocolate ice cream but the honeycomb makes it super special.


Chocolate Crunchie Ice cream

Ingredients:
2 cups / 500ml of soya cream (or full fat non-daiy milk)
1 cup / 250ml of vanilla soya milk (or more non dairy milk)
3 tsp arrowroot
4 tbsp / 1/4 cup sugar*
½ cup / 100g semi sweet chocolate chips
1 tsp orange extract
1 recipe of 'honeycomb' (about a cup - I used this recipe** but you can also buy it in bags in Julian Graves - they call it cinder toffee!)

Method:
If you're making your own honeycomb, it's good to do it the night before so it can really chill and firm up and it makes smashing it much easier!

To make the ice cream: Mix the arrowroot with about 4 tbsp of the vanilla soymilk. Add into the rest of it and pour into a saucepan. Add half the cream and the sugar and whisk it all together.

Heat over a low flame, stirring to dissolve the sugar, until it just starts to bubble – at this stage it will thicken slightly.

Turn off the heat and add the chocolate chips and stir until melted and evenly combined. Add the rest of the cream and the orange extract and leave to cool before chilling in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (I left it overnight).

Pour into ice cream maker and let it rip! The ice cream maker takes it up to a soft “mr whippy” like stage and mine took around 20-30 minutes - I didn't want to overfreeze it as that affects the texture.

After this time, remove it and transfer to a freezer safe tub with a secure fitting lid. Stir in the honeycomb and freeze for at least an hour before serving. Once it’s been in the freezer a good few hours it sets SOLID! So bring it out 10 mins or so before you want to eat it.

I kept back a bit of the toffee to sprinkle on the top but you can add it all in.

*The cream is slightly sweetened and the vanilla soymilk is pretty sweet so go easy on the sugar. If you use unsweetened versions you might need more, so taste it before you chill it.

** The link for the honeycomb/hokey pokey is an american one, English version is 100g caster sugar, 4 tbsp golden syrup and 1.5 tsp baking soda!

EDITED TO ADD...... this honeycomb recipe does not freeze well! The first day or so it was ok but today (after a week in the freezer) weirdly enough the honeycomb had melted into sweet little puddles. Luckily the ice cream is still awesome but I might try it with bought cinder toffee next time. Either that or just serve it the same day - don't leave it in the freezer too long.