ICE CREAM OF REDEMPTION

Hot on the heels of my wave of baking fuck-ups came a desire to parlay the fuck-ups into things that could be remotely construed as edible. I mean, for fucks sake. Those of you who know me know I'm hardly a picky gal, nor is the BF known to turn down cosmetically-heinous-but-still-tasty items. So, if something's salvageable, why not just do it to it?

Sitting in my fridge for a day or two was the burntish first layer of a chocolate cookies n' creme layer cake. While it was burnt and wrong on the outside, it was still num nums and moist on the inside. I actually had designs on using it to make a "Cake cake," a concept which I learned of from my friend Zach. Zach has the good fortune of knowing a culinary genius, who once mixed cut-up pieces of Hostess snack cakes into cake batter, thusly creating the first known Cake cake. I applaud this cutting-edge innovation, and was hoping to replicate it, vegan-style.



However, I had fired up my ice cream maker and was itchin' to use it. To do so, I had to freeze the internal bowl-y part of the ice cream contraption for at least 24 hours in advance, so actually making ice cream with it takes some premeditation. Now, I happen to have no complaints about vegan ice cream. Even in pre-vegan days I could totally get down with some Turtle Mountain brand outrageousness. But I'm not gonna front. I miss the shit out of some coffee ice cream. So, when I consulted my handy copy of Veganomicon and discovered that yes, of course, there is a recipe for coffee ice cream up in there, game was on.

So there you have it. Cake shrapnel and coffee ice cream: you do the math!



If you have the below-pictured ice cream maker, I recommend just freezing the hell out of all detachable parts of that sucker in addition to the aforementioned bowl-y part. The colder, the better. Also, patience is truly the name of the game with this apparatus. While the "manufacturers instructions" might lead you to believe that it take 20-30 to make ice cream, you should anticipate 45 minutes of churnin' time.



Coffee Ice Cream with Chocolate Cake Chunx

Serves two fatties

1/2 cup coconut cream

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 a 12-oz package of Mori-Nu silken tofu

1/2 cup soy milk

1/2 cup cold, strong coffee, or, better yet, espresso (which is what the recipe proper calls for and which, of course, I did not have on hand)

1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

1 cup chocolate cake pieces

Blend together the first six ingredients in a blender or food processor until totes blended. Dump into your ice cream maker and prepare according to your machine's instructions.

When the ice cream is almost done, dump in your cake chunkage. If this is not easy to do, just wait 'til the ice cream is done and ready for serving and/or storing and mix it in then.

I'm really running out of superlatives here at NOM NOM NOM HQ, but hot damn you guys. This was fan-freakin'-tastic. I've had few successes making homemade ice cream have the actual consistency of real ice cream, even back in the day when I was a lactose-tolerator, and this was one such success. The taste was mild and coffee-y with a surprisingly harmonious coconut taste underneath, and the chocolate cake chunkage really brought it to that stoned-teen level of ice cream flavor wrongness that we all know and love. The BF and I ate a shameful amount in one sitting, and I again nommed far too much the next day when sitting down to blog about the good stuff.



Also, homemade ice cream stores well in the freezer just left to its own devices in the bowl-y attachment part. Just cover tightly with plastic wrap and freeze!