Soya cream, Vanilla Ice Cream and Chocolate Sauce

Continuing to broaden out my vegan repertoire I've just been making chocolate sauce to go with the vegan ice cream I made yesterday. This all starts with the soya milk I recently posted. It's surprisingly good. The proportions here will give you about 3 dishes of the size shown below (big portions!), or 4 more sensible portions.

The first thing you need to make for both parts of this, the ice cream and the chocolate sauce, is the cream. For this you need...

Ingredients for Soya Cream

2 cups of soya milk

2 dessertspoons full of cornflour

1 cup of sunflower or rapeseed oil 

Take a cup of the milk and add a little of it to the cornflour in a small pan. Mix it to a paste, and add the rest of the half-cup to the pan. Pour the other half cup in the blender for later. 

Heat the pan until the milk has thickened (it'll get really thick) and the cornflour has cooked out so it no longer tastes powdery. Let it come off the boil, let it cool for a minute and scrape it in to the blender with the rest of the milk. Get it it zipping around until it's smooth, push it all back down the sides with a spatula if it seems to be all over the place. Take the little thingy out of the middle of the blender lid, and start slowly pouring the oil in while blending at speed. This is rather like making mayonnaise, it'll thicken up to a soft peak like thick double cream.

When you're done, it should be thick and creamy

If you haven't got a blender, you can make the same recipe with an electric whisk or stand mixer. Or a hand whisk if you're really patient and willing to give it a lot of welly.

For the ice cream

Half of the soya cream (from above)

2 tablespoons of sugar (more or less if you prefer)

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract*

Mix the ingredients together, until the sugar is dissolved. Do this in the blender if you wish. I've put an asterisk by the vanilla extract there because not all vanilla extracts are equal - if yours is a really intense brand you may need a lot less than 1 teaspoon.

After blending all together, taste it. When ice cream is frozen it's always a little less intense - you need the flavour to be a little too sweet, and a little too vanilla, before it freezes. Once you've got it how you like it, pour it into a shallow container with a cover and put it into the freezer. Take it out ever 45 minutes or so, stir it vigorously to get the frozen parts mixed in, and do so until it's frozen. 

For the chocolate sauce

Half of the soya cream (from above)

2 tablespoons of sugar

1 handfull of dark (vegan) chocolate buttons*

1 splash of coffee (filter is good)

Save the remnants out of your morning coffee pot. In fact if you're making any dark chocolate sauce, vegan or dairy, save some black coffee from the morning pot. 

Put the chocolate in a pan with the cream, add the sugar, and warm it gently. Don't be afraid to keep taking it off the heat while you melt the chocolate into the cream. Add the sugar too, and when it's all melted together and the sugar dissolved, add the coffee and stir it in. The water in the soy cream will allow you to mix the coffee in to the ganache like creamy chocolate mix without it splitting. Note that like the vanilla extract in the cream, all dark chocolates are not created equal. You may need lots, you may need a little. If you don't put enough in you can always add more.

Stir it occasionally as it cools. If you've got any spare after serving it with the ice cream, put it in little pots and keep it in the fridge, it'll almost set and it'll do fine for weekday desserts.