TASTE TEST: Rice Dream Vanilla Ice Cream Bar with Chocolate Coating

Rice Dream Vanilla Ice Cream Bar (credit: tastethedream.com)

RATING:

NOOOOO. My reaction as half of this ice cream bar fell to the floor. Pretty consistent with my experience with rice dream in general: it melts too fast! What a mess. I was way too much of a spaz for this ice cream bar and didn't get to enjoy it. The part that I did get to eat lacked the creamy consistency I have been spoiled with lately at the great vegan ice cream shops around NYC. If you're craving a bar like this, I would go with something from Klein's instead.

D.I.Y.: Sweet Crepes, "Peeps" and Ice Cream Sandwiches

I'm not a chef. In any way shape or form. But, I love watching the food network AND I love eating, therefore, sometimes I gotta make my own sweets in order to fill certain cravings of things that are not readily available vegan. I'm sure all you other vegans or trying-to-become vegans out there know the drill. I'm sure that even some of you have 40 vegan cookbooks and then look at the ingredient list and cry. I know I do most of the time. So my purpose here is not to give you recipes you can't use, but rather to show you ways a lazy vegan can make some awesome, tasty treats!

Sweet Crepes:
I borrowed this recipe from vegan yum-yum. I threw all the ingredients into my hand blender. blended. watched the instructional video (it's very useful!!) in the vegan yum yum post and made. Making crepes is hard. My hawt & single (nudge-nudge) friend Xin, who helped me with all this suggested we add food dye to make these crepes look pink. They came out kind of flesh colored instead. Gross.

Before I became vegan (was ovo/lacto vegetarian), I lived in Rome for a month and I would eat banana /nutella crepes every day. This is what I intended to re-create. I actually had purchased vegan hazelnut spread while in Rome, but my boyfriend and I ate it all within 5 minutes after I returned to the states and haven't been able to find it since. I found out that the Noir dark chocolate spread at Le Pain Quotidien is vegan, so I got some of that as a replacement. If you can't find that, this is vegan and so is this. I spread this on the crepe, chopped up bananas into slices and topped on the crepe, folded the crepe into a wrap, topped with powdered sugar and wa-la!

These crepes tasted amazing. Even if you suck at making crepes it will taste awesome, just not as awesome if you get it really thin and perfect.


Vegan "Peeps":
This is ridiculously easy and you are going to scoff at me when you read this, but they seriously tasted like peeps! All you need to do is buy some vegan marshmallows... I picked up Sweet & Sara because I found them in the grocery store near my job. Then you keep 'em at room temperature for an hour or longer, let them get kind of mushy. Get some colored sugar crystals - I found it hard to get these so I used the leftover ones I had from Christmas themed cupcakes I made in December. If you have granulated sugar or sugar in the raw you can just use that and it will probably be fine. Take one marshmallow at a time and put it quickly under running water, then dip each side in the sugar crystals. There you go! It looks like a peep. Now time to shape & decorate. Xin decorated her "peep" guy like a bunny. It's very cute. Mine look like the block guys from gumby. Before you eat... I would freeze them to let everything dry and stick together. Put them in the freezer for an hour. Remove, let them sit and return to room temperature (20 min)... then enjoy! These caused a crazy sugar rush and brought back some fond childhood memories.

Ice Cream Sandwiches:
I saw Giada making some awesome gelato ice cream sandwiches with lady fingers and mint and nutella and strawberries and I decided I could do that. So this is the lazy vegan version. I got some water crackers (carrs), they are basically plain crackers that have no flavor what-so-ever. It's good because then you can do whatever you want with them. What we did was we took a dropper and dropped one drop of peppermint extract on every cracker. This isn't necessarily but it adds a nice, fresh flavor to the dessert. Then I smeared on some of the dark chocolate spread that I mentioned earlier. Lastly, I went in the freezer, got out my Rice Dream Strawberry Ice Cream and used a tablespoon to put a big dollop of ice cream on one of every 2 crackers. Then i took the un-ice creamed cracker and put it on top of the ice creamed cracker in order to make a sandwich. Since everything melts so quickly, these are best served frozen. I put these bad boys in the fridge for an hour then ate them, all. This was definitely my favorite DIY of the day.

Thanks XIN for your help! and thanks roommates for helping to devour! <3>

Most Random Place to Find Vegan Sweets: Sunrise Mart

Sunrise Mart on Broome St. in SoHo

Nearly a year ago, I started working in SoHo. One of the first thing I noticed was that my lunchtime options were limited. I stumbled upon Sunrise Mart one day while strolling down Broome St. I decided to stop in with hopes that there would be an avocado roll or something along those lines. Boy, was I surprised to find this place sold Earth Balance, Tempeh, Vegan Mayo, Vegan Curry and best of all, plenty of Vegan Sweets.

A huge part of their ice cream freezer is vegan, with Rice Dream and Tofutti selections. In addition, the refrigerated section has zen soy pudding, silk chocolate soy milk to-go, and so delicious coconut yogurt. The best part is that the goods here are priced very reasonably. And you can pick up some interesting Japanese fruit while you're at it!

Every once in a while they will have other random vegan sweets, such as chocolate covered almonds, that are clearly labeled.

I'm not quite sure why they are so vegan friendly because there is nothing of this sort in the nieghborhood but I am very happy for it. There is also a Sunrise Mart in the East Village above St. Marks bookstore but I have never been. If you have been, fill me in on if it carries vegan sweets & other staples as well!!