Chickpea ice cream

Mon 01 Aug 2022 16:48:23 PDT

Ice cream is a world-wide favorite dessert and general-purpose sweet treat. In fact ice cream is a major industry in its own right and the subject of a huge number of scientific studies of its properties. Given this lavish attention a great deal is known about producing the well-made ice cream versions sold in specialty shops and supermarkets alike.

Given all that why on earth would we go to the trouble of developing this oddity of the dessert universe? Part of it was plain curiosity. Numerous recipes for chickpea ice cream (and other types of frozen desserts) are readily found on the web. Since the chickpea product used for ice cream is the cooking liquid, aka aquafaba, we had plenty available from cooking chickpeas.

So it was a crime of opportunity. Besides it was fun to try out dozens of variations in an effort to achieve a delicious but lighter-than-regular-ice-cream product. And yet good enough to serve to dinner guests who knew their stuff.

In the end this recipe (or really, set of recipes) emerged as the candidate of choice. Fortunately it's not difficult to reproduce but it does take some equipment and experience to get optimum results. In our opinion chickpea ice cream is worth every bit of effort it takes to make it.

Yellow pea "milk"

yellow pea flour 15g or 1¼ tsp
water 1 cup

Put water in a small saucepan. Stir in pea flour and mix until smooth.
Heat at medium setting until mixture thickens, about 5 minutes.

Flavor base

yellow pea milk 1/2 cup
gum arabic/senegal 4 tsp
coffee, instant/microfine 1 packet, 3.3g
molasses, jackstrap 2 tbsp
vegetable oil, neutral 1/2 tsp
pumpkin seed butter 75g or 5 tbsp
sugar, granulated 85g or 7oz (volume)
vanilla extract 1/2 tsp

Put milk in a saucepan, let cool to 165°F.
Stir in gum arabic until dissolved.
Add coffee, molasses, vanilla stir until uniform.
Place the mixture in a blender jar. Add oil and pumpkin seed butter.
Blend at medium speed until thoroughly mixed.
Remove mixture from blender jar, put in sealed container and chill in refrigerator until cold. The mixture will be quite thick and pudding-like at refrigerator temperature.

Aquafaba

aquafaba/chickpea cooking liquid 180g or 3/4 cup
sugar, granulated 75g or 3/4 cup
sugar, granulated (for guar) 10g or 1 tbsp
guar gum 1/8 tsp

Put aquafaba in a large bowl. (Its volume increases several times.)
Mix the guar gum with sugar, then sprinkle over the aquafaba and stir vigorously.
Immediate start to whip the aquafaba using either a stand or hand mixer with a wire whip. Start at low speed and quickly increase to maximum. (Even an inexpensive hand mixer with wire whip will do the trick for this purpose.)
Whip until the aquafaba reaches stiff peak stage. At that point the bowl could be inverted and the whipped aquafaba will not flow or fall out.
Then start incorporated the sugar into the whipped aquafaba.
Whip at maximum speed while adding sugar a spoonful at a time. The foam should not deflate or liquify if sugar added gradually.

Combining base and aquafaba

chilled flavor base ~1 cup
aquafaba foam in bowl ~1 quart

Mix a small amount of foam with the "pudding" to soften it slightly.
Using a silicone spatula begin to fold in a tablespoon or two at a time of the base into the foam in the bowl. It's important to do this carefully to avoid excessive deflation of the foam.
When all of the base has been folded in, put the mixture into suitable containers and immediately put in the freezer.
Yield is about 1½ quarts, but could be slightly more or less.
The ice cream will be fully frozen after ~4 hours, but time to frozen status varies with freezers, and characteristics of the ice cream itself.
Serve when completely frozen.

Flavor variations

Flavor variations are limited only by one's imagination. Many fruits work well, particularly berries (strawberry, blueberry, etc.), cherries, and soft solid fruits. Generally the fruit is mixed with sugar and cooked until volume reduced to about 4-5 ounces. Adding ~4 oz of a "plant milk" and pumpkin seed butter will make a flavor base of similar or slightly greater volume to what's in the main recipe.

Finding ingredients

This recipe calls for some "exotic" ingredients that may be hard to find locally, especially outside major metropolitan areas.

Yellow pea flour. This one really isn't exotic, just yellow split peas processed in a blender until reduced to a fine powder. Quite easy to make at home. (Most kitchens have a blender. Even inexpensive models should work well enough for the purpose.)

Gum arabic (gum senegal). Online sources are best bet. Amazon and other sites offer the product. It's used in the recipe to reduce ice crystal formation and acts an emulsifier. Not truly essential but helps make a smoother ice cream. Or try leaving it out and see if there's a noticeable difference.

Guar gum. Another not so exotic item. It's sold in many large grocery stores. Guar is used in gluten-free cooking and remains in demand. Bob's Red Mill is a popular brand available online if not locally. Guar helps emulsification and promotes foam formation and stability.

Everything else is "non-exotic" and shouldn't be a supply problem!

Categories: chickpea dessert sweets

About Thinair Recipes

Recipes developed with low-sodium diets in mind—so easy to use!

Here's a quick guide:
Recipes have one or more “boxed” ingredient lists grouped with step-by-step instructions, for example:

garlic, chopped 3 cloves
chicken stock 2 cups
...other ingredients...

Saute garlic in oil until soft.
Add chicken stock to pan...
...next step...

Ingredient boxes show what you'll need for the numbered steps. Not too complicated!

BTW “salt” in our recipes refers to salt substitute, i.e., potassium chloride, KCl. (Since KCl may not be healthy for some people, ask your doctor if it's OK for you to use it.)

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