Vegan tahini pear ice-cream with berry swirl {no ice-cream maker required}

May 8, 2015 by Margaux 17 Comments

After my success with making vegan meringues the other day, I still had some leftover pre-bake meringue mix that was lying in the fridge. The texture becomes rather foamy and I was too lazy to re-whip it to bake, so I did the only logical thing: made ice-cream. No words, just heaving breathing. :p

You know, all this is one big excuse to tick off something from my to-do list: pear ice-cream. When I lived in Finland it was my absolute favourite flavour since I didn’t really see it elsewhere. Creamy and only ever so slightly sweet, it was just perfect. So naturally I go and add a raspberry swirl and stuff, but still, even without the swirl I’m pretty psyched about how easy this is.I didn’t use an ice-cream maker because I didn’t put the machine in the freezer beforehand, as one is supposed to do, and I think I’ve misplaced some of the components (don’t tell Man-thing!), but you can do this either way. I always prefer the machine, just to feel like some masterful chef, but it works as I’ve described it below, which is pretty much to shove the mixture in the freezer.Ingredients (serves 2 – 3):

• 1.5 cups meringue mix (either fresh or refrigerated (much foamier))
• 1 can sliced pears, drained and rinsed
• 1/4 cup tahini (or another nut butter such as cashew – no PB!)
• 1 tsp caramel essence
• pinch salt (do not skip)
• 1/2 cup frozen raspberries
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 TBSP barley malt extract powder (optional)

How-to:

1. In a small non-stick pot on the stove add your berries, cinnamon, nutmeg and optional barley malt extract powder and heat up over medium heat, squashing down the berries with the back of the spoon until the mixture is cooked down, almost jammy (approx 5 minutes). Let cool.
2. In a food processor, blend your pears, tahini, caramel essence and salt until smooth. Fold the pear mix and meringue mix together in a freezer-safe tupperware.
3. Blob and swirl in your berry mixture.
4. Freeze for 2 hours.
5. Before serving defrost on the counter for 10 – 20 minutes (it’s winter here so it took a bit longer).

A thousand different angles of ice-cream? Why not! Seriously, this stuff is easy gold – the meringue mix is just fantastic as a base because it’s pretty much got you covered on the sweetness side of things and has the lovely softness to it.

In other news, I’m getting more and more excited for my biopsy in less than a week! In the meantime I’m going to spend the weekend scaling down in prep for it so that I don’t walk into the operating theatre swelled up like a balloon. I love food like you can’t believe, so I’ll have to spend my Saturday making some pretty epic light zucchini soups and stuff (luckily not a hardship!) and stocking up on cucumber and jelly. One of these days I’m going to eat a big, hunking vegan burger and not wish I’d never been born!Luckily this ice-cream is so light and creamy that I had a whale of a time munching my portion. Man-thing polished off the pre-prepared cones rather quickly, so at least I know it meets with his benevolent approval :p

And with that, THANK GOODNESS IT’S FRIDAY! 😀 😀 😀 I have an assignment of doom to get through before Monday, but at least it will be done in pajamas for most of the weekend, except for my grandmother’s birthday party. I’m going to be super lame and take broth-y soup along, but it will be interesting to test our navigational skills – we may just end up in the North Pole. I’ll try and post again before then, but if you don’t hear from me by Tuesday you’ll know border control has us