Vanilla Snow Cream

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Another year is coming to it’s grand finale. Make sure you celebrate in style and with many loved ones.
Dessert for ‘Festive Menu 2024’ (Rcp#57, prepare for Festive Menu first)

Ingredients for ‘Vanilla Snow Cream’

  • 300 g hoccaido pumpkin flesh, frozen
  • 2 very ripe bananas, peeled and frozen
  • 8 tablespoons date sweet (granulated sugar made from dates)
  • 4 tablespoons coconut blossom sugar
  • ½ teaspoon ground vanilla powder (not vanilla sugar, the pure stuff)
  • 2 tablespoons virgin coconut oil
  • 40g cocoa butter chips (about 3 tablespoons)
  • 1 teaspoon locust bean gum
  • 1 tablespoon elderflower syrup dissolved in 2 tablespoons cold drinking water (prepared in a small separate bowl)
  • 3 tablespoons oat yogurt
  • 150 ml hot water (75-80°C)
  • You will also need: a pot that holds 1 liter of hot water (from the faucet) and a small pot that you can safely place on the rim of the other pot for a water bath, as well as a wand blender and a mixing/blender bowl that holds about 1 ¾ liters.

Preparations for ‘Vanilla Snow Cream’

  1. Thaw the frozen pumpkin pieces and cut them into small chunks when thawed (do not cut completely frozen, risk of cutting yourself).
  2. Place the pumpkin pieces in a saucepan and add 150 ml of hot water. Bring to a brief boil, then reduce the heat and let the pumpkin simmer over a low heat for about 8-10 minutes, then turn off the heat. Place in a mixing bowl and mash a little with a fork. Allow to cool to lukewarm.
  3. Mix the sugars with the ground vanilla and stir into the cooled pumpkin puree.
  4. Cut or break the frozen banana pieces into smaller pieces to make them easier to blend, then add to the pumpkin mixture and blend with a wand blender in the mixing bowl.
  5. Dissolve the locust bean gum in the elderflower syrup mixture. Stir well so there are no lumps of powder in the creamy mixture. Add the oat yogurt and stir again, removing any lumps, until you have a smooth cream.
  6. Prepare the water bath with the saucepan and the smaller saucepan as described above. Use only hot water from the tap (50°C is enough), do not heat it up. Melt the coconut oil in the small saucepan until it is completely liquid. Then add the cocoa butter chips. Let both take their time to liquefy. Do not force it by overheating or it will get sticky and messy! After the cocoa butter has completely liquefied, mix the two fats a little by gently swirling the pot.
  7. Take 3 tablespoons of the pumpkin mixture and stir it into the yogurt and locust bean gum cream (dissolved in elderflower syrup). Make a smooth cream then stir this cream into the rest of the pumpkin mixture. Stir well.
  8. Pour the liquid coconut oil and cocoa butter mixture into the pumpkin cream in the blender jug. Use the wand blender briefly to get a perfect cream. You may need help here (an extra pair of hands) as you need to gradually but quickly incorporate all the oil before it solidifies again.
  9. Pour into a flat, frost-resistant bowl with a lid and place in the freezer. Stir after two and four hours of freezing to make the cream smoother.
  10. Remove from freezer about 10 – 15 minutes before serving. The time it takes to defrost the cream depends on the temperature in your freezer or freezer compartment.

You can make this dessert a day or two before serving.

Side Notes:

  1. Those of you who have followed the details or even prepared last year’s [‘Festive Menu 23’] may have noticed the similarities between the two desserts. In fact, they are based on the same fundamentals. Only this time I used cocoa butter instead of a standard chocolate bar. That changes the requirements for binding ingredients and blending flavors quite a bit. It even changes the order in which you have to put everything together. Fascinating, isn’t it?
  2. Yes, I know: Snow should be white. But I am not talking about the color, but the consistency. It is more like a parfait than a solid ice cream. That’s why you have to take it out of the freezer about 10 – 15 minutes before serving. Also, vanilla is not really white, as you may have noticed. It’s actually the opposite of white. But some consumers prefer a black and white approach to chocolate and vanilla because they are supposed to be opposites in taste. Not quite the way I see it, but you can actually get different effects with both. For example, I use chocolate to round out savory or fruity flavors and vanilla to smooth out edges.

Please note: For all my recipes (text) on this blog (By MagS, Parsley-Lane Blog) I grant a CC license under the terms of BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike). For further explanations, please see the Legal Notice or visit creativecommons.org.