This vegan pandan ice cream recipes uses fresh pandan leaves for a nutty, grassy-sweet flavour.
Long time readers will know my aversion to word soup; no one needs the ingredients listed countless times in a 2,000 word post that somehow still says nothing, but I'll touch on a few things I think are actually relevant: a couple of the more obscure ingredients and the difference between pandan leaves and pandan concentrate.
Firstly, there are a couple of ingredients that may be infamiliar: glucose syrup and guar gum. Both are included to improve the texture of the ice cream.
Glucose reduces the freezing point of ice cream, which in real terms means it's going to be easier to scoop straight from the freezer. It also adds some sweetness, but that's not its primary purpose here.
Guar gum, an extract of the guar bean, is a stabiliser that prevents the formation of ice crystals in ice cream and improves the texture so that it's smooth and creamy. It's not necessary to add, but recommended.
And now onto the difference between commercial pandan essence / paste / concentrate and fresh pandan leaves. Both are great in their own respects, but are hugely different from each other. In the same way that onion powder isn't a carbon copy substitute for fresh onion, I personally don't think pandan pastes or essences are interchangeable with fresh pandan.
Commercial pandan paste or essence comes in small bottles or jars, much like vanilla or other extracts. They're typically bold green from dye, with an artificial flavour that's not like the fresh stuff. I'm not knocking it because it's got a great aroma and flavour (so long as it isn't overused), it's great for baking, and would probably be good in ice cream too, but it lacks the depth of the fresh stuff.
Fresh pandan features a nutty popcorn-like note from acetyl pyrrolene, which is also responsible for the aroma of basmati and jasmine rices. And then there's a furanone called sotolon, which imparts a caramelly aroma reminiscent of maple syrup. FYI I'm not a food scientist - I reference Harold McGee's Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World's Smells for these things that I know nothing of (also real people, not just AI, use em dashes).
Incidentally, you can knot a pandan leaf and bury it in the aforementioned rices to enhance this flavour. I also have a recipe for pandan horchata to showcase how well these ingredients go together.
A recipe for vegan pandan ice cream
Equipment
- Ice cream maker
Ingredients
- 250 millilitres non dairy milk I prefer barista style oat milk
- 25 grams fresh pandan leaves snipped into 1 inch pieces
- ¼ teaspoon guar gum
- 100 grams sugar
- 2 tablespoons glucose syrup
- 250 millilitres double plant cream e.g. Flora or Elmlea
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Add the non dairy milk, pandan leaves, and guar gum to a blender. Liquidise until the milk turns green and the pandan leaves are finely ground. This won't take long.
- Tip the contents of the blender into a saucepan and bring to a very low simmer. Cover and cook for 10 minutes (use the lowest heat setting on the least powerful burner).
- Place a fine mesh sieve over a bowl and pour the hot pandan milk in. Use a silicone spatula to press the liquid through until all you've got left in the sieve is a small mass of pandan, which you can throw away or compost.
- Add the sugar and glucose syrup to the bowl and stir to dissolve the sugar. Then add the double cream and salt. Give it another stir to combine.
- Let the mixture cool down and then refrigerate it for at least a couple of hours.
- Add to your ice cream maker and churn per manufacturer's instructions. You can eat it straight away or freeze for a more firm texture.
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