This vegan ice cream is also paired with a cardamom and cashew praline for another layer of incredible flavor! Super easy ice cream recipe with an irresistible tropical twist!
Watalappan
Does the name Watalappan sound familiar to you? I shared the recipe for the traditional Sri Lankan watalappan a few months ago, and it’s one of the most popular posts on this blog. It’s a cardamom and nutmeg spiced coconut custard, one of our favorite classic Sri Lankan desserts with a uniquely fantastic combination of flavors and texture. I’ve shared a bunch of my favorite ice cream recipes on the blog before. From classic vanilla ice cream, chocolate ice cream, and mint chocolate chip ice cream to more fun flavors such as date and tahini ice cream, ube ice cream, cereal milk ice cream etc., there are so many interesting flavors that you can develop with ice cream. But I wanted to go where no one else has gone before and turn the amazing watalappan dessert into an ice cream. I had the option of using eggs to make the ice cream or make it completely vegan. I was intrigued by the thought of making a vegan ice cream and decided to hand myself the challenge. Then I made it even better by making a Cardamom and Cashew Praline that paired with the flavors in this ice cream perfectly! That praline is SO good, you’ll be eating it on its own. Mark my words. So I researched on how to replicate the creamy thickness of the ice cream base without adding eggs. The two options I seriously considered were cornstarch and Xanthan gum. Both are capable of absorbing liquid and therefore act as thickening agents (there are many other starch options with which you could do this as well). Cornflour or cornstarch is obviously a starch. It works really well for desserts like custards and puddings. It’s also a great choice if you don’t need to freeze your mixture – so if you want to make the traditional watalappan custard WITHOUT eggs (and still get a creamy pudding-like consistency), cornstarch is the way to go. However at low, freezing temperatures, cornflour loses its structure and doesn’t maintain that thick consistency required for ice cream and also doesn’t become as “airy” as needed when you whip air into it. Xanthan Gum is a polysaccharide often used in foods as a thickener and it’s produced naturally by bacterial fermentation and synthetically as well. It’s a stronger thickener than cornstarch and acts like an emulsifier as well. It is also very stable at freezing temperatures, and therefore great for ice cream as it allows proper aeration which in turn allows the desired consistency of ice cream to be achieved. I have to say though, I do not like using Xanthan gum for puddings/custards. It’s more of a personal preference really, but for ice cream it works well. Only a small amount of Xanthan Gum is required to thicken your mixture. And I mean, a very small amount – generally about 0.5% of the total weight of your mixture! However because it clumps up very quickly, it does need to be mixed in vigorously! I used an immersion blender, and it worked perfectly. And if you don’t have an ice cream maker, you can make this vegan coconut ice cream as a no-churn ice cream by using a hand-held beater to churn this base, by mixing it every hour until the mixture hardens in the freezer. It will still give you a delicious and smooth ice cream, but of course an ice cream churner will yield smoother results. A note on being Vegan Friendly – As a reader pointed out, I did not clarify the sources of the sugar I used. Due to the bone-char refining process, most white sugars and brown sugars are not vegan friendly. As per my original watalappan recipe, I use Billingtons for this recipe (IF I can’t get my hands on some classic Sri Lankan jaggery (which is vegan friendly), AND I use Imperial Granulated Pure Cane Sugar for the praline – which is vegan friendly as well. So will you like it? I think you MOST DEFINITELY WILL! 🙂 As far as I know, no one has made Watalappan ice cream before, but for those of you have have had the classic custard, this has all the same and wonderful flavors, but creamier, just like an ice cream is supposed to be. And of course it’s vegan too. This recipe isn’t as rich as the regular custard because it doesn’t contain egg yolks, but I’ve made sure it tastes just as freaking amazing! 🙂 And for those of you who haven’t had the classic watalappan (cardamom and nutmeg spiced coconut custard) – The coconut here makes it deliciously creamy and together with the molassy dark brown sugar and the beautiful warmth of cardamom and nutmeg, you get an ice cream that will taste unlike anything you’ve had before! And to top it all off (quite literally), the sweet cardamom-cashew praline adds a sweet-spicy crunch that will make eating this ice cream a truly addictive experience! 🙂 Trust me on that one too. If you want to be adventurous with your ice cream this summer – THIS is what you’ve got to try!
