Vegan Almond Blancmange

I started by making rice milk. And I hated it. 

I know, that's an inauspicious start to a blog post. But it turned out to be a good thing. I've been experimenting with plant milks and so far this one is by far the least milky. But I wasn't going to waste it, so I adapted it into a fairly traditional blancmange recipe, which I'll share below. And it's not at all bad.

To begin with, you need your rice milk. Then you can make your blancmange.

The Recipe

Rice Milk

For the rice milk, you will need...

1 cup of cooked rice
4 cups of water

Put the rice into a blender, add the water (or as much as will fit without spilling) and give it a damn good thrashing. Blend it as fast as you dare for three or four minutes. Then pour it out through a fine sieve (not a straining bag), and make the volume up to at 850ml (a pint and a half) with water if you haven't got that much. It'll be quite gel like, and you may need to twist the sieve around a bit to get it to go through.

The Blancmange

You will need

850ml (a pint and a half) of rice milk
4 tablespoons of sugar (more if it is to your taste)
5 heaped tablespoons of cornflour
2 tablespoons of dried coconut cream
1/2 teaspoon of almond extract*

Food colouring of your choice (I used yellow)

Put the milk in a pan and add the sugar, start with about 3 tablespoons, and stir in the almond extract. Yes, you can use a different flavouring, and yes, it's a good idea to add less rather than more. Stir it in, taste it, and sweeten more and add more flavouring if you need to. I've put a star next to the almond extract because not all extracts are created equal - with some you may require more, with others you may need less.

Now mix a little of the liquid in with the cornflour, mix it to a paste, and pour it back in to the mix while stirring. If you're using the dried coconut cream (this is common in Asian supermarkets and a really handy thing to have in) then add this with the cornflour. It's not absolutely necessary, but it'll make the dish a bit richer, and a bit more creamy. 

The word blancmange is obviously comes from the old French for "to eat white", so it can simply be a thickened milk dish. But traditionally it's coloured and often put into quite elaborate moulds, but I was boring and just went bowl shaped, and I like yellow. When you've got your mix in the pan, flavoured and with the cornflour added, mix food colouring a drop at a time until it's a colour you like. Obviously if you're trying to keep this vegan be careful about what colour you choose - cochineal might not be to your taste.

Get a bowl or a mould ready to pour the blancmange in to when it's ready.

And now cook it, stirring the whole time, until it's thickened and when you taste it the cornflour is fully cooked. It won't take long. And at that point pour it out into your mould.

And that's it, you're done. Put it aside to cool, and come back later when it's fully cool and turn it out of the mould. There's not a lot of protein in it, like a dairy milk blancmange, and it shouldn't be hard to get it out. If it is then you can always put the mould into a larger bowl of hot water for a few minutes.

Serve with whatever you want really - we're going to have ours with some left over vegan chocolate sauce that I made to go with soya ice cream.