Genius Recipes
This Genius 2-Ingredient Ice Cream Just So Happens to Be Vegan
Three ingredients if you count the cherries on top.
This is part of our Genius Recipes collection—a column founded by former Food52 Creative Director and lifelong recipe hunter Kristen Miglore intended to unearth recipes that will change the way you cook.
With just two ingredients, you can blend together a cold, creamy ice cream base, then pop back outside for a quick Super Soaker battle (or whatever else you were planning to do with what’s left of your summer).
For this to be possible, the two ingredients in question—which, in Alice Hart’s The Way To Eat Now, just so happen to be vegan—really need to pull their weight.
Coconut milk (ingredient #1!) brings the creaminess and requisite fat to churn up into a light, smooth ice cream. And—in addition to a little more good, nutty fat—marzipan (ingredient #2!) brings its sweet, intoxicatingly almond-y flavor.
If you’re thinking marzipan is more of a holiday thing, then you’re not alone. But it’s just as delightful in summer, especially against the clean canvas of coconut milk, instead of the hygge hodgepodge of a Swedish Princess cake or stollen.
Boom. 2 ingredients. End of story, right?
Not so fast. Hart also likes to crumble up the marzipan and toast it in the oven until melty and golden first, a trick she’s used to flavor other frozen treats. "This is almonds on steroids—sweet, full-bodied, caramelized, and fragrant," Hart wrote to me. (1)
I don’t know why this never occurred to me before, since toasting any nut is such a well-known way to deepen and develop its flavor into the best version of itself. Nuts mixed into a “candy dough” with sugar are no different.
This little toasting trick gives Hart’s marzipan ice cream a much more intense and stirring almond presence than the toasted almond pops from the ice cream truck, not unlike the difference between listening to your favorite song on your phone’s tinny speaker and a fancy pair of noise-cancelling headphones.
You can find marzipan at lots of grocery stores in the baking aisle (and always online), but Hart even included a bonus hack for making your own all-natural version with almond meal and extract (plus dates for moisture and sweetness). It will taste more like a date shake than a sculpted marzipan fruit, unsurprisingly, but it will still bring this simple vegan wonder into reach if you can’t locate marzipan the day you want it.
And whichever way you make it, cherries on top should be considered an almost nonnegotiable third ingredient.
| 11 | ounces (320 g) natural marzipan (store-bought or homemade, see recipe introduction) |
| 3 1/3 | cups (800 ml) coconut milk |
| Cherries, to serve |
| 11 | ounces (320 g) natural marzipan (store-bought or homemade, see recipe introduction) |
| 3 1/3 | cups (800 ml) coconut milk |
| Cherries, to serve |
(1) Hart also recommended scattering untoasted marzipan over the top of a frangipane tart with apricots or other stone fruits so that it toasts up as it bakes, or using the toasted marzipan to spike a custard or crème anglaise (bearing in mind that marzipan will always bring along some additional sugar and intensely nutty vibes, so tweak your recipes accordingly).
More from Food52
- Our 52 Most Popular Products of All Time
- Why We Love the Dansk Pitcher
- Our 5 Best Skewer Recipes
- 13 Essentials for Setting a Farmhouse-Inspired Table
From our new podcast network, The Genius Recipe Tapes is lifelong Genius hunter Kristen Miglore’s 10-year-strong column in audio form, featuring all the uncut gems from the weekly column and video series. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss out.
Listen & Subscribe
Written by: Kristen Miglore
Popular on Food52
21 Comments
Which promotes plant based recipes with no added oil, salt or sugar.
But the recipe above making homemade marzipan is perfect. Thank you!!!
Join The Conversation