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Kombucha Ice Cream Float

May 4, 2017 · Natalie 18 Comments

A swirling sweet glass of creamy ice cream and fizzy fruity kombucha–this Kombucha Ice Cream Float is an easy summertime treat with endless variations!
[wprm-recipe-jump]

If you asked me what sweet treat is more summertime-perfect than (n)ice cream, my first instinct response would be nothing. Nada. Whatcha thinkin’ silly?

Well besides mythical creature-inspired nice cream of course, but that doesn’t count because it’s in a separate magical dessert category along with those hollow spheres made of chocolate and any cake taller than 3 layers. Have you ever tried stacking cakes? Because I have, and trust me anyone who can pull off 4+ layers has powers.

But back to ice cream…

After creating this recipe, I was reminded of why ice cream floats are actually even better than non-floating ice cream (ice cream sinks?). All the cold creaminess of ice cream but submerged in the fizzy fun of soda. Or in this case kombucha.

Growing up, cream soda was always my first choice for floats because I love anything vanilla. Also root beer tastes like bubble gum toothpaste, and not in a good way. Just think about that one for a minute and you’ll realize that I am right. If I just ruined root beer for you, I am (kinda) sorry. But we don’t need it anyways because we have kombucha!

I’m pretty sure root beer flavored kombucha is actually a thing, but I have never seen cream soda kombucha. And while I have heard rumor that vanilla kombucha does exist somewhere in the world, it does not exist in a 20 mile radius of me. So while we patiently wait for better kombucha distribution over here, we’ll rely on vanilla in the ice cream instead.

But you could make endless flavor variations of this beverage/dessert (bevssert?) because kombucha and ice cream both come in about a zillion and twelve varieties.

In this float, I used my Vanilla Oatmeal Ice Cream plus blueberry kombucha, because those two flavors pair like two peas in a purple pod. And they swirl together rather exquisitely too I think.

Now if you don’t want to make your own real-deal ice cream (or don’t conveniently have a batch sitting in the freezer from testing the recipe with almond milk), then nice cream float away my friend! You and your frozen nanas and your blender will be ready for pouring on the fizzy kombucha in no time. Or you could just buy coconut milk ice cream, and you will be sipping your float in even less then no time. It’s not a race though.

If you are curious about this oatmeal ice cream business, yes the batch here is the almond milk version. The original recipe uses coconut, but as you can see in this video the almond milk pulls off a pretty creamy scoop too.

I know there is already blueberry in the booch, but I wanted to make it a lil extra fruity. So I may have layered some frozen bluebs in between the ice cream scoops. And maybe some blueberry jam snuggled in there too. You were already going to need a straw AND a spoon anyways. Also it just makes it extra prettyyyyy.

Virtual fruity kombucha float glass clink to you!

Kombucha Ice Cream Float

★★★★★ 5 from 2 reviews

Prep Time: 5 minutes
Total Time: 5 minutes
Yield: 1 person 1x

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Description

A swirling sweet glass of creamy ice cream and fizzy fruity kombucha–this Kombucha Ice Cream Float is an easy summertime treat with endless variations!

Ingredients

Scale

2 scoops vanilla ice cream ((or ice cream/nice cream of choice))
1 cup blueberry kombucha ((or kombucha of choice))
2 tbsp blueberry jam (*)
1/4 cup frozen blueberries

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Instructions

Layer the ice cream, jam, and frozen blueberries into a glass.
Pour the kombucha over top.
Enjoy!

Notes

*Store-bought is fine too, this is my favorite brand as it is sweetened with only fruit juice.

More summertime sips…
–Choco-mint isn’t only for ice cream, its superdelish through a straw too
-The customary citrus sip but without the customary cup of sugar
-As close to a salad as a milkshake can get
-Yes, yes I did blend an entire cupcake into this glass of berry goodness

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Homemade Golden Oreos

May 1, 2017 · Natalie 50 Comments

Golden Oreos from scratch with healthier real food ingredients–nothing from a package can compete with these vanilla cream-stuffed sweet cookie sandwiches!

This is a recipe is long overdue. I posted the original easy vegan oreo recipe over a year ago, and I really have no excuse for why it has taken me so long to make it’s cacao-free counterpart.

But I’ve learned a lot about ~~life~~ cookies since that post…

1) As the number of ingredients decreases the willingness to bake increases at a rate of approximately cookie raised to the cream filling-th power.

2) If a cookie isn’t made with oat flour…well it should be. Or at least come with an oat-y option.

3) If a cookie is made with oat flour, it needs some sort of fat source in the dough to be both rollable and not as dry as a saltine cracker in the desert on a hot day after baking.

4) Rolling and cookie cutting leads to much more neat and refined edges than the plop-and-squish method.

5) If you sub cocoa for cacao powder in a 3 ingredient recipe involving a lot of cacao powder you may end up with a bitter cookie. But that one doesn’t really apply here considering the golden part of this version.

6) Coconut butter makes for a much less messy filling than coconut cream and actually hardens into a very Oreo-mimicking texure when chilled.

7) Oreos are already vegan. Oreos are vegan. Did you know Oreos are vegan? Oreos. Are. Vegan. If I had a quarter for every time…then my bag would be real heavy since I only use cash like three times a year.

8) I had way more to say about cookie lessons than I realized…huh.

I originally intended to make these little golden cookie guys similar to the original recipe just minus the chocolate. But unless I was going to change the name from Golden Oreos to Pale & Pasty Oreos and force us both to suffer through the chewy cookie weirdenss that was trial one of this recipe, some tweaking needed to happen. Who would’ve thought cacao powder (or lack thereof) would affect the texture so much?

And when I say “tweaking” what I mean is I overhauled the entire recipe and the only ingredient they have in common at this point is maple syrup. It was for the best.

And when I say “best” what I mean is they are golden, sweet, crispy-edged, soft-centered cookie perfection just waiting to be smushed around a cream filling and cookie monster munched away into the sunset!

When the brown rice flour version flopped, I stared at the bottom shelf of my pantry debating the flour options. Almond flour appealed to me since I know it does golden very well. And tigernut makes a mean shortbread cookie, so it crossed my mind too. Coconut flour would be a sure-fire fail. And where the heck did that gluten-free muffin mix come from?

But since I get lots of questions asking how to sub oat flour into the original Oreo recipe, it is the clear flour favorite. I had my doubts about oat’s ability to pull off this cutout cookie job (see #3 on the list above), but I’m willing to try ~~any~~ ~~most~~ some things once.

My plan for combatting the oat-y dryness was coconut butter. And it worked marvelously. And the cookie dough rolled and cut and even rolled again from the scraps. And they baked into lovely golden Oreo halves. Turns out the cookies just wanted a little bit of that filling richness infused into them too. Can’t blame ’em.

Simple scrumptious 4-ingredient golden cookie–DONE.

The filling just follows right along with the coconut-butter-is-magical theme. Because melted and mixed with a little non-dairy milk and optional sweeter, it makes for a very Oreo-ish cream filling.

As we all know by now, store-bought Oreos are already vegan. But they are not gluten free (which is a bit surprising since everyone seems to be jumping on that right now…Nabisco?) Or made with real food ingredients. Or customizable with about a kazillion potential filling options…
-(My favorite little fruity hack) a banana slice.
–Chocolate ganache for a decadent dessert-eo.
-Fruit jam or jelly in whatever flavor makes you happy.
–Date paste. Because it can do all the things.
–Chocolate protein powder frosting. Or vanilla protein frosting even as long as you have a really non-yucky brand of protein powder.
–Nicecream. Because it can do all the things too, only colder. Nicecream + date paste = power couple.
-Anything else that sounds yummy sandwiched between two cookies!

I am still undecided, but I just might prefer these to the original chocolate version. Which is saying a lot because you know how I feel about chocolate. But there is something about vanilla and coconut and crispy brown edges that I just can’t resist.

Happy coconut cream squished in a cookie-sandwich snacking!