Revenants | Cherry Chocolate Chip Vice Cream

Fun fact, Gothic Granola isn't dead.  Neither am I.  I've been Instagramming my creations but haven't been blogging as I've been creative writing and working on other projects.  Since November 2015, I have made several kinds of vice cream (vegan ice cream) including:

• Chocolate


• Rocky road


• Mint chocolate chip


• Pistachio


• Cherry chocolate chip


• Kind of whippy vanilla (that's a lot like coco whip)

As with many recipes I make repeatedly, I have made this vice cream recipe from The Kitchn my own (compare my recipe for gingerbread...oh the irony in that post).

I have altered the ingredients and procedure to produce a close replica of store-bought vice cream for a fraction of the cost.  Plus, I get to use my stand mixer and its cool attachments (literally).  I really want a Xenomorph custom paint job on the Kitchen Aid body, seriously.

Cherry Chocolate Chip Vice Cream

• 1 16-oz can full-fat coconut milk


• 1 16-oz can coconut cream


• 1/2 cup agave nectar or organic sugar


• 2 tablespoons tapioca starch


• 1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum


• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract


• 1 teaspoon almond extract


• 3 tablespoons coconut oil, room temperature


• 1 cup fresh cherries, pitted and snipped into quarters


• 1/2 cup dairy-free chocolate chips (mini are better)

1. Make sure your ice cream maker drum is chilling according to manufacturer's instructions.


2. In a blender, blitz coconut milk, coconut cream, agave, tapioca starch,  and xanthan gum for two minutes or until warm.


3. Pour vice cream base into a medium saucepan.  Warm over medium heat, whisking occasionally.


4. When coconut milk mixture coats the back of a spoon and you can run your finger through it without the gap filling in, turn off the heat.


5. Stir the extracts and coconut oil into the warm "custard" base.  Transfer to another bowl and set aside to cool.


6. Once it's cooled to room temperature, cover the vice cream base and set in the refrigerator to cool 8 hours or overnight (overnight is better).


7. After your base has cooled, churn according to ice cream maker instructions.  


8. In the last 30 seconds of churning, add in the cherries and chocolate chips. (Depending on your machine, you may want to just fold in the chunks by hand).


9. Chill churned vice cream in a glass container in the freezer for an hour or two before eating!

This is the recipe that taught me the importance of almond extract to make vanilla taste more vanilla.  You can't taste the almond at all, but it is the stagecrew to the vanilla's performance: unseen but extremely important.  Also key to this recipe is blitzing the shit out of the coconut milk mixture in the Vitamix, an activity which is pretty much the basis of every recipe on this blog post-June 2012 (I bet you just garden path-ed on "blog post-June," but I'm not changing it).

 

"I don't know which me that I love/ I got no reflection."

Yes, I am a walking cliche, to the uninitiated; I quote Marilyn Manson to go on a tangent about reflection and all the reflecting I've been doing over the last few months.  "Don't run from me/ I won't bother counting one, two, three..."

I really liked Born Villain, OK?

So, about this old post...

http://gothicgranola.com/2012/09/byo-raw-vegan-lasagne/

In hindsight, as an older and (one would think) more mature person, it probably wasn't cool that I brought my own stuff, BUT

• at least I brought enough to share


• and I wasn't a silly person who ate stuff they can't or shouldn't in order to fit in (the likelihood of someone who attended the event in question reading this is incredibly low; I'm sorry not sorry).

I am "difficult"--my name is a single letter, I'm vegan and gluten-free, and I will not be walked on or allow myself to obey a "you can't do that" until I hear a good reason.  Sorry not sorry.  I wouldn't have lived, and I mean lived as long as I have, if I did succumb to a simple "no" (in some situations; no means no, legalese and footnotes).

"Many people die at 25 but aren't buried until 75."  Not actually Ben Franklin, but whoever said it, it's a good 'un.

Actual Ben Franklin: "He that waits upon Fortune, is never sure of a dinner."  Going on four years later from the rawsagne, I feel justified.  I hate not being fed and not being able to eat when other people are--but I can't eat eggs, gluten, dairy, or animal protein--and my presence is required, so there's no leaving.

Q of now wouldn't have done squat for others and made anything to share, especially not with people from the alma interfector.  Instead, I would've made my extra-special-fortified protein shake and drank it while driving to the event.  Maybe I'd bring dessert.  Why the change of heart?  I'm much better at protecting my energy, a la "kindness to those who deserve it."

Due to the time of year (nota bene, I drafted this post in January 2016), I've been having a lot of flashbacks to January-February 2013 (none of them pleasant; that was a dark, dark time in my life, and it only got darker!  Huzzah bulimia relapse!).  I'm sure I became the laughingstock of the fellowship program I left in January 2013, but hey, I didn't fit in, my job was becoming...awkward (to put a gloss on it), leadership and I didn't see eye-to-eye, and I wanted to do other things with my life (i.e., study to be a health coach, be my own person, actually live life outside of a script for once). 

People don't give a flying fuck about health and wellness in DC other than "wellness" as a means to an end: keeping up with the Joneses, looking good for the ladies, staying in shape for one's military job, and so on.  That's my strong, three-years' experienced opinion, as someone who still works for a DMV-based company, and I daily face the frustrations of trying to get "wellness" to the people. What is wellness, anyway?  That's a question for another post.  I can tell you that according to the 'nets, "wellness" looks like a bunch of white women (with various hair colours) holding apples, mainly Granny Smith.  What's up with that?

Wait, wait, that above paragraph is just me externalizing my own opinion.  I don't give a shit about "wellness" and the wellness industry anymore.  Why?  Good old fashioned science helped me recover from bulimia, not any of the wellness coaching training upon which I wasted money or the people I met through those programs.  Going to a Registered Dietician (who also happened to have some kind of holistic certification) helped me figure out my "macros," protein in specific, and supplements, and bam, within a month, no more bingeing and purging.  The reiki and acupuncture in that month of serious work on myself served to mentally reset my path and "break the cycle."  Magic and prayer?  Nope, science, Western and Eastern medicine, and meditation.

 

 

It's really funny (it's not really funny; that was just my segue), as I work on reposting the blog and writing a new post, I feel the same emptiness I felt when I wrote a good bit of this.  Working on my novel doesn't give me that kind of feeling.  Writing the novel (or any other story not about my own life) is much more...satisfying, and that word's not quite strong enough to convey how I feel.  Hence, lack of blog postage: it's the difference between riding bitch on a sportbike (blog: reportage, along for the ride) versus riding a sportbike (creative writing: setting direction, total control).