Tag: Recipe

Chai Oat Milk Ice Cream

WolseyLeave a comment

I completely forgot about this post while I was removing from surgery. Just totally left my mind. I wrote this about mid to late March 2024. However, I think the ice cream was great so I am still posting it!

I would love to be out in the garden starting for this year, but I had surgery at the beginning of March. It’s really thrown me for a loop, so while I recover I have been puttering around inside the house.

Today’s project was turning a box of chai oat milk into ice cream. We bought a case of this oat milk last fall at Costco, and this is my recipe for the base I’ve been working on. I am trying to keep the ice crystals at bay for texture. It works pretty well.

Ingredients:

I like to lay everything out before I start in case I am missing an ingredient.
  • 4 Cups Chai Oat Milk, or one full carton.
  • 3/4 Cups Sugar
  • 4 Egg Yolks
  • 1/4 TSP Guar Gum
  • 1/2 TSP Cinnamon
  • 1/2 TSP Ground Ginger
  • 1/4 TSP Black Pepper
  • 1/4 TSP Cloves
  • 1/4 TSP Cardamon
Adding all the spices into the oat milk.

Directions:

  1. Mix the guar gum into the sugar thoroughly.
  2. Heat oat milk in a sauce pan.
  3. When it’s warm, add the sugar and guar gum with an immersion blender to ensure it’s not going to clump on you.
  4. Heat milk to hot, but not boiling.
  5. Temper the milk into the eggs in a separate bowl by adding spoonfuls of hot milk into the eggs while whisking, then when the egg yolks are good and hot, add them slowly back into the saucepan with the rest of the milk while whisking it in. How to temper egg video if you need it.
  6. Continue heating for 8 minutes, but don’t boil. Whisk regularly.
  7. Strain the resulting mix into the bowl. You’ll want to strain out any random clumps and eggy bits or escaped guar gum.
  8. Cool on ice until room temp, then put into the fridge until completely cold.
  9. Use the ice cream maker of your choice.
Tempering the eggs.
My high tech cooling method.
This is my overpriced ice cream maker. If you got the cash to spare, I do recommend it.

Notes

I have been doing a lot of test recipes for ice cream ever since I got my Whynter Ice Cream maker. That’s not an affiliate link, I just liked it. I just wanted an ice cream maker that had its own compressor. It’s a $300 machine, but I was so fed up with store bought ice cream getting weird I threw down the cash on a serious ice cream maker. Plus, getting non dairy ice cream is expensive and never that good.

It’s as if all the corporations out there are hell bent on saving that last tenth of a cent on everything despite all the record profits they rake in from our consumption, so the ingredients are getting cheaper, and the taste is crappier. I never thought I would have nostalgia for junk food from the 70s and 80s, but here we are.

This ice cream maker has its own compressor so you don’t have to freeze anything. You just toss your ice cream mix into it, press go, and it goes. I never have room in my freezer, nor can I organize when I will make ice cream, so this saves me from having to pre-freeze a bowl. This one has a yogurt maker option, but I haven’t delved into yogurt making at this point in my life. It’s extravagant, but now that I live in a home I own, I can actually pay for things and expect to keep them long term, instead of however long I have that much space in my rental.

I tried this recipe without the extra spices first, but the cold dulls the chai flavor, which wasn’t that chai forward to begin with. I like a chai that bites back, so I added the spices in from my favorite chai recipe. I think I could have honestly doubled the amount, but it’s still quite good.

I have also been experimenting with stabilizers, and I have found without the guar gum, you get a very icy crystal texture to varying degrees. The eggs are also an ice cream stabilizer, but I find without them, you don’t get a rich ice cream texture and it feels thin. Together, it comes out pretty good. This has worked with milk, cream, and now oat milk as my base.

Instant Hot Cocoa Mix Recipe

Wolsey3 Comments

I don’t really drink caffeine much at all. I used to drink coffee when I was young, but then I switched to tea when the caffeine was getting to me. When that was a lot I stopped that too, and now I like a hot beverage in the morning, but not the caffeine. I drink cocoa instead, and yes it has a smidge of caffeine, but not enough to trip me up.

I also don’t have much of a sweet tooth, so most commercial mixes are way too sweet for me. I do it when I eat out for breakfast, but on the day to day breakfast? I prefer less sugar. I feel like everyone is competing for the sweetest hot cocoa mix.

I also like a bit of heat in my cocoa, so I make mine with cayenne pepper. Just a tiny smidge.

This started as an Alton Brown recipe, but it’s since been tinkered with to fit my needs.

I like to lay out all the ingredients out before I start in case I miss one. Ignore the batch of tomatoes. They just keep growing, so I need to make more tomato sauce. Also ignore I have four tins of cocoa powder. We kept buying it and opening it, and now I have like three half tins and a full one.

Ingredients:

  • 5 Cups whole Dry ilk. (No Nonfat! It won’t work right!)
  • 4 Cups Powdered Sugar
  • 1 Cup White Sugar
  • 2 Cups Cocoa Powder
  • 4 Tsp Cornstarch
  • 2 Tsp Salt
  • 1 Tsp Cayenne Pepper

Directions:

  • Toss it all in a bowl, and mix with a whisk.
  • To use, put 1.5 TBSP, or one heaping spoon full in your mug, and fill with hot water.
  • Adjust everything to taste.
Whisk a lot to make sure it’s incorporated, but carefully so you don’t toss powder all over the kitchen.

I was worried about calories because that is a lot of whole milk, but I put it in MyFitnessPal.com, which isn’t 110%, but it turns out it comes to approximately 46 calories for 1.5 TBSP of the stuff, so go wild. The lowest calorie packet I could find was a generic Winco packet for 110 calories so this beats the pants off of that.

I converted everything into tablespoons for the recipe and at 1.5 TBSP for each serving it comes to about 130 servings, in case you were wondering. I make this up every few months.

This is a screen shot from MyFitnessPal’s recipe calories screen.

Lastly, be prepared for storage. It makes a lot.

Finished mix in containers and one cup of cocoa, and a thumb in the lower right corner because I have fat fumbling fingers. I keep the ball canning jar on the counter, and the rest in the cupboard out of sight.

I’ve been doing this for years now, and honestly I even take it with me when I travel. Trying to get a non caffeinated option at a hotel is stupid hard for some reason. I just pack it up in little bags and add water.

Rice Porridge – Congee for Breakfast

Wolsey1 Comment

We eat a lot of rice dishes and my favorite way to use up leftover cooked rice is as a breakfast porridge or congee.

Ingredients

  • 1 TSP ginger paste from those convenient grocery store tubes, or use fresh. Whatever works for you.
  • 1 TBSP Better Than Bouillon Chicken Flavor – Don’t use a cube of bouillon. It’s not as tasty. This stuff is a different world of flavor, and I hate brand name anything.
  • 2 Cups cooked leftover rice. Bonus points if you made it with MSG the night before. Don’t fear the MSG.
  • 2 Cups water, then maybe extra at the end if needed
  • 1/4 Cup Crushed or Chopped Peanuts
  • 1/4 Cup Low Sodium Soy Sauce – Or regular if that’s what you have.
  • Enough chopped green onion to top

Directions:

  1. Add rice, water, ginger, and chicken Better than Bouillon to the sauce pot.
  2. Bring to a low boil for somewhere around 20 minutes, or until your rice reaches a rice pudding texture. You can go longer or less, depending on your time constraints. I often do chores while it’s going and forget for a while.
  3. If it looks too thick, add a bit of extra water, mix thoroughly, then give a minute or so to integrate.
  4. Stir in the crushed or chopped peanuts.
  5. Put in a soup bowl, and drizzle soy sauce on top, then add your green onions.

Notes:

I also sometimes add a fried or over easy egg, or sausage, or leftover chicken teriyaki. Basically whatever I have in the fridge at the time, or whatever I have the energy to make for it. It’s very versatile.

Garden Note:

I have these grocery store green onions I have planted in my garden when I was done with them, and I cannot emphasize enough how much better they taste planted in my garden. They have so much more flavor.

I was not holding my breath as they came from the grocery store, but apparently proper care and growing time makes them a whole different plant.