By Chiara Ghiron, a food-loving chemist by training, vegan ice cream teacher and founder of The Craftsy Cat. This guest article first appeared on icecreamcalc.com and is published here with her permission.
Why Vegan Ice Cream Is Hard
Making a good plant-based ice cream is far from simple. My first attempts were really terrible. Ice cream is a complex food, and taking the animal ingredients out of it makes it more complex still.
Moving to a plant-based diet means letting go of habits and expectations that were formed by the foods we grew up with. Textures will be different and flavors more muted, and nowhere is this more noticeable than in ice cream, where milk, cream and eggs have shaped our idea of what a favorite scoop should be.
Imitate, or Open Up?
Our palate is used to the textures of animal ingredients, so it takes some effort to get used to something else: the perceived temperature, the structure and the flavor will almost inevitably be different. Learning the principles of plant-based cooking and how to choose its ingredients is enriching for anyone who is interested in food.
It also raises a question of philosophy: do we want plant-based ice cream to imitate traditional ice cream in every respect, or do we open ourselves to new textures, new intensities and a different sweetness? Opening up does not mean that anything goes, or that we should accept a poor result.
A "Nutritional" Approach
My approach is a "nutritional" one. I look at the composition of a typical homemade milk-based ice cream to understand how the proportions of sugars, fats, proteins and other components translate into what we taste, and then I try to rebuild that with plant ingredients.
Fats
The structure of a fat sets its melting point, and the melting point affects how well the air bubbles whipped in during freezing and churning stay stable. So one of the first questions is which plant fats perform best in ice cream.
Proteins
Where a protein comes from matters. Some plant proteins behave differently from milk and egg proteins when it comes to foaming, and they react differently to heating.
Starches, Fibers and Total Solids
Starches and fibers generally have a much heavier influence in plant-based ice cream. They contribute to the total solids, and they have to make up for the solids that skimmed milk powder normally provides. Starches and fibers from different sources behave very differently, so I watch their behavior closely:
- How much water do they absorb?
- If the ice cream hardens, is it because of ice, or something else?
- Does it stay soft in storage, or does it crumble?
- Does the structure improve or get worse over time?
Everything Depends on Everything Else
The ingredients depend on each other. A standard base to which you simply add pistachio paste, hazelnut paste, cocoa mass and sugar is neither easy nor useful. Pistachio, hazelnut and chocolate are often the hardest flavors to get right, precisely because it is easy to overlook how their own chemistry changes the structure of the ice cream.
Tools and Ingredients
To work this way you need to know what is in your ingredients: nutritional databases, a spreadsheet with lookup functions, or Ice Cream Calculator, which takes care of many of these aspects for you.
Isolated proteins can work well as structural additives. Whole ingredients have nutritional advantages but bring structural difficulties. I started with isolated soy protein, came across vegetable proteins with an awful taste, and went back to whole ingredients wherever possible.
My Two Approaches
Over time, two main approaches have emerged. I often wander off and come back to them with variations; it is an iterative process.
- Commercial soy milk as the base. Soy milk is almost magical for ice cream, and its taste has improved a lot.
- Water-based mixtures, with cashews and coconut oil in different proportions depending on the recipe, to balance the other ingredients.
Even with a handful of common ingredients, it is like a 5000-piece puzzle.
Other Difficulties
Many ingredients cause negative reactions, psychological or allergic, in some people, which limits the choice.
There are ethical and environmental questions too. Some plant ingredients come with human exploitation or a high environmental cost. Anyone who cares about animal exploitation should care about this as well, so the supply chain has to be one you can trust.
Cost and Collaboration
My approach may seem elaborate. Plant-based ice cream is not as cheap as ice cream made with milk and cream, although the subsidies to the dairy industry hide the real cost of milk and cream. For that reason it suits restaurant desserts better than ice cream parlors, where competitive prices matter most.
For me, ice cream is a research project as much as a consultancy business, and not hard-wiring anything keeps me creative. Collaboration is the basis of knowledge: I keep my approach openly accessible, and I have worked with Patrik on the vegan part of Ice Cream Calculator.
If you would like to learn more, I teach the science of vegan ice cream and gelato in small-group online courses, in English and Italian. I also share recipes and ideas on Facebook.
— Chiara Ghiron
Vegan Ice Cream in Ice Cream Calculator
This section was added by Ice Cream Calculator.
The calculator has four default charts for plant-based recipes, developed together with Chiara:
| Chart | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Vegan Base | A general vegan base, served at gelato temperature |
| Vegan Ice Cream | Ice cream-style vegan recipes |
| Vegan Gelato | Gelato-style vegan recipes |
| Vegan Chocolate and Nuts | Vegan recipes built on chocolate, cocoa or nut pastes |
Besides the usual targets for fat, solids, sweetness and serving temperature, the vegan charts use two properties you won't find on the dairy charts. They follow the points Chiara makes above:
- Saturated/Unsaturated: the balance between saturated fats (such as coconut oil and cocoa butter, solid when cold) and unsaturated fats (liquid oils and most nut fats). It controls the fat structure that holds the air and the texture.
- TSNFS (total solids not fat or sugar): the proteins, starches and fibers that have to take over the job of milk solids.
Choose the chart that fits your recipe and balance as usual. See Balancing for Different Ice Cream Types and Charts.