Customer Reviews

Vice Cream: Gourmet Vegan Desserts

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I held off reviewing Vice Cream until I made the following flavors at least once and shared them with a friend: Vanilla Delight, Chocolate, Chocolate Chip, Mint Chocolate Chip, Mint Carob Chip, Chocoholic Delight (chocolate chocolate chip), and in the raw section, Strawberry. After all, I wanted to be able to review this book with some authority. :-)

And the verdict is: Delicious!!! In fact, the regular Vice Creams (cashew based) are better than all the Baskin Robbins and packaged ice cream I had before I was vegan, and equal in deliciousness to homemade dairy ice cream. The regular Vice Creams are also better than all the packaged vegan ice creams I've ever had. The only equally tasty non-dairy ice cream I've had is made fresh at the soy dairy at The Farm in Summertown, TN.

The raw strawberry Vice Cream I made (p. 48), (the first of the two raw strawberry Vice Creams in the book) was very good, but not as fabulously delicious as the cashew based Vice Creams. In addition, the raw strawberry Vice Cream was more complicated to make than the regular Vice Creams, as I had to make almond milk first, which involves soaking almonds overnight, blending them with water, and then squeezing the water through a nut bag. The dates muddied the pink color a bit, so if you want a raw vice cream with the pink color you've grown accustomed to in childhood, you might want to try sweetening with agave nectar instead of dates.

I had never made home made ice cream nor Vice Cream before, and I was amazed at how simple it is. To make regular Vice Cream, I blend cashews, water, and some flavorings in a high powered blender which I chill overnight in the fridge. I use a K-Tech, but a Vitamix would work too. A regular blender would probably work if you blend longer. The next morning, I pour the blender contents in a Cuisinart ice cream maker (adding any chocolate chips near the end of the mixing time) and about 20 minutes later, I have fresh, delicious, soft-serve ice cream. If I want it firmer, I freeze it a few hours. It's important that when freezing the ice cream, you don't pack it into the container, otherwise you're defeating the purpose of the ice cream machine mixing the contents with air. Jeff says Vice Cream keeps several months, but at my house it's always finished within a week.

Vice Cream comments:
* I have calibrated my sweet tooth to be about 75% of Jeff Rogers' sweet tooth. When he calls for 1 cup of maple syrup, I use 3/4 cup and add an extra quarter cup of water. When he calls for 1 cup pitted dates, I use 3/4 cup, otherwise I find the Vice Cream too sweet.

* I always use ground up fresh vanilla bean in place of any vanilla flavor Jeff calls for. It's extra work to cut a vanilla bean into small pieces and grind it up in a coffee grinder, but totally worth it.

* There is controversy in the raw foods community about whether cashews can really be raw. The Living Tree Community says their cashews are really raw, and I believe them. One can increase the rawness of the cashew-based Vice Creams by sweetening with raw sweeteners such as dates or agave nectar.

* I've tried many of the "ordinary" ice cream flavors. I leave it to someone else to review the Raw Jalapeno Heaven and the Coconut Durian!

* There's a pattern to making the Vice Creams. If your favorite flavor is not in the book, it would be easy to use Jeff's book as a template to concoct your own.

The bottom line on Vice Cream is that it's delicious and quite easy to make. I'm looking forward to my first summer with Vice Cream! :-)

As someone who preferred Ben & Jerry's and Hagen Daaz only a few short years ago, I have never liked the soy based "ice creams" sold in stores. Now that I no longer eat dairy, I have more often skipped dessert altogether rather than eat the soy brands unless I was desparate. No more! This wonderful little cookbook is a dream come true. I was very skeptical when I first saw it: How can cashews and maple syrup even begin to satisfy my craving for a rich, creamy frozen dessert? Well, they can and then some. I couldn't be happier with the taste and texture I found with the first recipe I tried (chocolate, of course). Also, the recipes are very easy to follow and take very little time. And the selection of recipes is mouth watering; there are so many great flavors to choose from.

One thing readers should be aware of is that almost all of the vice cream recipes use cashews, which can be pretty expensive. Give it a try, though, and you won't be able to resist!

I am a vegan and am also allergic to dairy. All of my life I have wished for a great "ice cream". The recipes in this book are amazing. They are creamy and rich tasting and there are also options for raw fooders. In addition to ice creams, there are recipes for sauces. One recommendation is to make sure you blend the mixture very well before putting it in your ice cream maker to prevent it from being grainy. This book has so many gourmet and creative ice cream flavors and tips for creating your own ice cream flavors. I highly recommend this book.

ok this is yummy. i dislike eating dairy and can't find recipes not using tofu (i have a food sensitivity). this tastes fantastic. i made the vanilla (2 c. org. cashews pureed till smooth, 2 c. pure water, 1 c. real maple syrup, vanilla). put it in my new cuisenart (reviewed on amazon) ice cream maker and it was ready in 10 min. the only problem i see is that nuts are high in fat (14g. of fat in 1/4c. of cashews) and i can't seem to limit myself. this will have to be an occasional treat. the book has other recipes using hazelnut, almond, or coconut milks. sorbet recipes also.

This is incredible! As a vegan looking for an alternative to dairy AND an alternative to soy ice cream I've finally found something that meets taste and texture standards. I made my first recipe tonight, choclate (and towards the end I threw in a little peanut butter to get some ripples) and I am floored.

I have to admit though, really puzzled by the reviewer complaining about not being able to find the ingredients. If you can find cashews, maple syrup, vanilla, and water (all available at any grocery) you have a base in which to make countless flavors of vice cream. Also, you MUST blend this long enough to make the mixture extremely smooth, it took me about 5 minutes in the blender.

If you are a vegan missing ice cream look no further!

If you are used to putting evaporated milk and strawberry jam into your ice cream maker to get a quick batch of ice cream, this isn't the book for you. This book neccesitiates time to prepare the ingredients.


I am truly grateful for, and laud this book. It's a primer on making nut milk, and I learned alot. It's a vegan raw foods cornucopia for ice cream recipe translation. All the ingredients listed are fresh.

Unfortunately, all of the coconut recipes were useless to me because they required fresh coconut juice or to make fresh coconut milk with the pulp. Outside of the tropics, this is expensive or impossible. One can substitute cashews, but then it's not coconut ice cream. My only thought is, either the author is a purist with no acceptable alternatives but fresh ingredients, or he decided not to give any helpful "in a pinch" substitutions for canned coconut milk, or commercial almond milk because people are lazy and wouldn't take the trouble to use fresh, enzyme rich ingredients. Thus, this took some trial and error on my part to get the recipes right using canned coconut milk. Being imperfect (and busy), I try to reach some middle ground between raw and non dairy, and lifestyle functional.

This book is full of accurate proportions and taste ideas, it's a valuable tool for making non dairy ice cream.

Just a note: After having a heckuva time with those "pre freeze your cannister" type ice cream makers, I bought a Gelato with it's own compressor off Amazon. It's so great, you can make ice cream on the spot, batch after batch. With a pizzelle maker at hand, you make your own cones and the kids have so much fun, they don't miss Baskin Robins.

This book has really helped me - a devout ice cream eater, now born-again vegan. I have made four recipes in two weeks and this book gives me hope that milk, cream, butter, eggs, and sugar will never enter my diet again. Although it is hard for me to find honey dates (used in many of the recipes), the medjool dates has been a great substitute. Thank you Mr. Jeff Rogers.

I served this ice cream to some non-vegan friends and they LOVED it. For those who are raw or eat living foods there are plenty of delicious raw vegan recipes as well. The ice cream is delicious and there are A LOT of recipes to choose from. I highly recommend this book!!

To make the nut ice cream even healthier use raw organic nuts. Yes they are high in fat but when they are used raw, it is good fat. Roasting the nuts causes the oils to become rancid and acidic.

What I love about this book:
~Proves you don't have to suffer an ice-cream-less existence just because you've given up dairy
~Gives great, healthful alternatives to sugar
~Lots of recipes to make you drool

What I don't love:
-The author is nit-picky about a lot of ingredients/details (i.e. organic cashews, alcohol-free vanilla flavor and alcohol-free almond flavor, "Sugar Loaf" pineapple, etc). Making suggestions to use these things is fine, but the book makes it seem mandatory. My husband & I do not use alcohol-free vanilla flavor nor do we use whole vanilla beans or og cashews, because the only alcohol-free vanilla flavor we can find contains sugar and vanilla beans and og cashews cost a small fortune. We don't think the alcohol inhibits the freezing enough to worry about it. And what is "Sugar Loaf" pineapple anyway? Never seen it.

-Doesn't give alternatives to things like "fresh coconut." What a pain! We buy a good quality canned coconut milk (Thai Kitchen Coconut Milk Brand is great and in this case we do find that the organic version is noticeably better) and have made ice-cream as good as Coconut Bliss.*
*Coconut Bliss: A coconut milk ice-cream made in Oregon, I don't know if it's available elsewhere, but it's super yummy).

-More cashew recipes than coconut milk recipes. We prefer coconut based ice-cream much better than the cashew ones, but you may disagree.

So in short use this book with a willingness to experiment & deviate from the ingredient lists. We're glad to have it and use it as reference and for ideas frequently, but it's no bible of vegan ice-cream. That's for sure.

PS. So far, the Chai is our favorite! We combine both cashews and coconut milk to make it and go heavy on the nutmeg (here fresh ground is best but the stuff in a jar is good too) and allspice and add vanilla. We want to try new flavors, but we keep going back to this one!