It’s been another summer of Vegan Frozen Desserts and also a summer of pies, and most of them were made from delicious summer, summer fruits. And the pies were also made using store-bought gluten-free crusts. Because they work like a dream, and because even Martha Stewart1 herself doesn’t always make everything from scratch.
My first VFD of the summer was the pretty pink one made from apriums in the photo above. It had the best texture of any VFD I’ve ever made. It formed the neatest scoops and didn’t have to sit out for as long as a VFD normally does before softening to a scoopable consistency. (The chopped fruit in the photo above is cherry plum, which was the star ingredient in my second VFD of the summer. I write about it a few paragraphs down.)
I don’t know why the texture was so amazing. Maybe the dark-skinned and orange-fleshed apriums were unusually high in pectin or some other thickening compound. Or maybe it had something to do with the ratio of oils I ended up using. I made a double batch, for a half gallon or so of finished product, and had planned to use all canola oil. But I didn’t have 2 cups of canola oil, so I topped off the measuring cup with about 1/3 cup of melted coconut oil.
I tried using that oil ratio—5/6 canola to 1/6 coconut—in a Vanilla Bean VFD I'll write more about below. Its texture was fantastic, but it wasn't quite as magical as the Aprium VFD's.
The long chilling time—about 24 hours—from the making of the VFD base to the churning of the base probably also contributed. I pulled a thick and delicious Aprium Custard out of the fridge. Tony and I could have eaten it with two spoons just the way it was, directly from the saucepan, but I gave it a spin in my frozen dessert maker. It was my favorite VFD of the summer for many weeks.
The first pie I made turned out to be my favorite: Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie. Tony requested the pie for his birthday. I used this recipe from Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food: A Grocer's Guide to Shopping, Cooking & Creating Community Through Food via MarthaStewart.com as the basis for my recipe.
The ginger crumb topping sounded like a worthy addition, but I wanted the strawberry-rhubarb combo to come through without any interference, so I didn't bother with trying to make a gluten-free and dairy-free version of the topping. And I loved the final result. Whoever first put strawberry and rhubarb—and a good deal of sugar—together in a dessert was a genius.
I followed the filling recipe faithfully except I added 1/2 teaspoon of salt and I used Bob's Red Mill 1-to-1 GF flour in place of the all-purpose flour.
I made my next VFD of the summer, Cherry Plum, twice because the first time the cooked base looked like it was flavored with chocolate instead of fruit. That's what you see in the photo above. The photo below is the second attempt, after churning, when the final product looked like it could have been made of pumpkin.
I didn't think the cherry plums2 (the cross between a cherry and a plum) had oxidized the first time, but I wanted to be sure, so I added some lemon juice to the pieces of pitted fruit in my blender for the second batch. The base looked pretty much the same, maybe slightly more orange and slightly less brown than the first time, but there wasn't enough of a difference to make me think the lemon juice had significantly enhanced the color. And the final color, after processing and hardening in the freezer, was certainly orange enough to look like it wasn't chocolate. I came to the conclusion that was just the color the red-skinned and orange-fleshed fruit was going to produce in a VFD.
The flavor and texture were on point, but they weren't as good as they were in the Aprium VFD.
That's Tony's favorite pie of the summer, a Blueberry-Lemon Pie, just after I put it in the oven. I used the Blueberry-Lemon Pie With a Butter Crust recipe from Food Network's Amy Thielen as the guide for my filling.
I used arrowroot instead of cornstarch, added 1/4 teaspoon salt, and left off the pats of butter. I hoped the butter wouldn't really be necessary without a top crust. After I stirred the ingredients together and poured them into the unbaked crust, I ended up removing almost a cup of the filling because it looked so heaped up, I thought it might spill over the sides as it baked without a top crust to help keep it contained.
I really enjoyed this pie too, and I've got a feeling I'll be making it one more time before the summer is over. Or maybe in our fall, because it will still feel summerlike on most days then.
That's the Vanilla Bean VFD. I made it to fill a hole in my forthcoming recipe book because I realized I had my recipe for Vanilla VFD made using vanilla extract down pat, but I hadn't worked out the recipe using a vanilla bean.
Tony and I agreed this VFD needed more vanilla flavor. I used half of a bean, and I should have opted for the whole thing. The other half is in the freezer, awaiting another use. I've got another whole bean in my pantry, so I have what I need to give this VFD another go.
I will also try adding more salt next time. I used my usual 1/8 teaspoon in this first attempt.
The VFD's texture was wonderful, if not quite as perfect as the Aprium VFD's. In the photo, it reads a bit icy outcropping high in the mountains. That's because I didn't think to check on its progress until my 60-minute timer went off, and my super-chilled base didn't really need the full 60 minutes, so the churned VFD was super-duper frozen.
My Peacharine+ Pie was tasty, but it certainly looks, shall we say, rustic. You can tell it wasn't cranked out in a factory.
I thawed both GF crusts in the package, planning to give the pie a complete top crust. But the second crust fell apart in my hands—I should have only barely thawed it before trying to remove it from its tin—so I had to do a lot of manipulating to get the lopsided coverage you see here.
I mostly followed this GF and dairy-free recipe from MamaShire for the filling, but I substituted ground ginger for the cinnamon and arrowroot for the cornstarch. And for the fruits, I used mostly peacharines, a new-to-me-but-not-really-new cross of a peach and a nectarine.
I bought a bag of peacharines at Sprouts, thinking I might use them in a pie but without having checked how much I would need of them weightwise. Once I settled on a recipe, I figured out I was about a half pound short. When I went back to the store two days later, most of the peacharines were rock-hard. I was able to buy a few more that were ripe enough to join the earlier-purchased ones in the pie, but I had to supplement them with some ready-to-go nectarines and peaches.
We enjoyed this pie, but not as much as my two earlier efforts. The filling was plenty moist without being overly liquid.
My next VFD also utilized ginger: Chocolate-Ginger VFD, shown in the photo above alongside a scoop of Vanilla Bean VFD. I've had this recipe down cold for a while; I was just in the mood for a chocolate-based VFD, and this one never disappoints.
My Cherry Pie was the biggest disappointment. I'd had high hopes: I followed this recipe from Connoisseurus Veg that called for both vanilla and almond extracts. We didn't have almond extract—and I didn't want to run to a store to get some—so to try to infuse some almond flavor into the mix, I replaced some of the arrowroot I used in lieu of the cornstarch called for in the recipe with almond flour.
In case the almond flour wasn't as efficient at absorbing moisture as the arrowroot, I used some additional arrowroot, for a somewhat heaping 1/4 cup of starchy stuff altogether. I think that was a mistake. The pie was too dry.
When Tony and I ate the last of the pie, right from the tin, he poured the dregs of a long-lingering bottle of Luxardo maraschino cherry liqueur3 over it. That perked it up!
I didn't take any pictures of the creation of my last and favorite VFD of the summer, Strawberry-Rhubarb, and we ate it up quickly, so here's a photo Tony took of me anticipating a GF cone of it.
This VFD turned out as well as I could have hoped, considering it was my first attempt at this flavor. I cooked down equal amounts of strawberry and rhubarb with agave and a small amount of lemon juice, producing exactly 1 cup of strained strawberry-rhubarb sauce. I stirred that into a plain VFD base and ran it through my frozen dessert–making machine.
I was going to make a second, double batch last week, but Sprouts was rhubarb-less. I may have to wait until next spring to make this VFD again.
1Martha Stewart Living's last issue was the one for May 2022. I'll miss that magazine. For many years, I kept every issue intact and stored them in cardboard boxes. Before we moved from New Jersey to Florida, I put an ad on Craigslist's free stuff page, and a woman loaded them all into her car. She said she would share them with a group of elderly women who would enjoy reading them.
2 The growers and sellers of cherry plums should agree on a one-word name for the fruit. (The ones I bought were branded CherriYum! Cherry Plums.) I suggest cherrum. Who's with me?
3Tony had bought the Luxardo to make aviations.