When I read today’s VeganMoFo prompt — to recreate a restaurant meal — there were plenty of dishes that came to mind. There’s the cashew fondue from De Hagedis, the vegan kapsalon from De Vegetarische Snackbar, the babi pangang from De Oude Plek …
But in the end, I chose something else, because
1. I didn’t have the time/ingredients to do those restaurants’ dishes justice anyway, and
2. I had a stronger craving: ice cream and chocolate sauce.
Dame blanche (aka vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce) used to be one of my favourite desserts to order when we went out to eat, and I think it’s a shame that vegan versions aren’t easier to find! But fine, we’ll just make our own. I used this ice cream recipe from Serious Eats with a few changes in order to use the ingredients I already had. I didn’t have corn syrup, but keukenstroop is also supposed to be high in glucose so I used that. I had some vanilla-infused whiskey from a vanilla extract experiment, so that went into the mix as well. My biggest mistake was probably that I used cheap (watery) coconut milk which made the ice cream a bit icy — but nothing a generous amount of chocolate sauce can’t fix!
Links of the day
I’m loving everyone’s recreated restaurant dishes and I’m seeing so many things I want to eat! Right now, I would particularly like to try this stoverij with seitan from De Groene Keuken and this aubergine/eggplant parmesan from Vegan Eats & Treats.
Eating with the Rabbits 
I’m always draw to a classic like vanilla, a whiskey infused bean is a nice touch. I bought the cheapest organic coconut milk -so it was still bloody expensive- to make one of my soups and it looked like it was curdled, still tasted good. I read the can and it listed it as coconut extract :(
Ooh, shame about the curdling. :( I love the fair-trade coconut milk I can get over here because it’s very thick and creamy, but I only had one can of it so I mixed it with thinner/cheaper coconut milk. Better next time!
I like the idea of vanilla infused whiskey—or whiskey infused vanilla—I don’t have a sweet tooth, but looking at your photo made me crave ice cream and chocolate sauce too.
I also enjoyed the links to some of the other dishes that you would have liked to recreate—I’m finding so many new (to me) dishes from this MoFo topic!
Thank you, I’m glad the ice cream looked good to you too! Perfecting the chocolate sauce turned out harder than I’d expected, so I made a few versions, but I though this one resembled the restaurant version the most.
I like the idea of whiskey as vanilla extract too, but it didn’t really take on much of the flavour. Maybe my vanilla beans were too old.
I had no idea there was such an elegant name for this ice cream dessert. I approve!
Wikipedia tells me it’s called a Coupe Dänemark in Germany, and that it used to contain white peaches and white currants! That sounds even more elegant. :)