Our several-week sweets extravaganza continued today with flourless and frozen desserts: ice cream, pudding and compotes.

The day ended up being pretty low-key. We had all day to prep our recipes, and because of the lag time during which various ingredients needed to simmer, cool or churn, it was actually pretty relaxing. My group was assigned four desserts: a nine-fruit compote, a coconut ice cream, a strawberry sorbet and a tapioca pudding made with homemade almond milk.

We’re trying to incorporate a cherry compote into the dessert for our Friday night dinner, so I jumped at the nine-fruit compote. As the name suggests, it contained nine dried fruits (duh): raisins, golden raisins, cranberries, cherries, apricots, figs, dates, pears and prunes. To make the compote, I simmered a 1:2 ratio of water to brown rice syrup, added about three cups’ worth of the dried fruit along with a sachet of cinnamon, cloves, orange zest and peppercorns, then cooked it over low heat until the fruits were syrupy.

This smelled like Christmas and tasted even better. I didn’t expect the compotes to by my favorites of the day, but they definitely were. So sweet, yet spicy and fruity at the same time.

Another group made a pear and walnut compote that I actually preferred to my own. The walnut chunks really helped give it a good texture.

And the third compote was a simple pear and apple one in red wine. This would have been amazing spooned over vanilla bean ice cream.

Speaking of ice cream, there was a vanilla bean one!

While most of the frozen desserts we prepared were entirely vegan, this recipe contained eggs and heavy cream. Unsurprisingly, it was hands-down my favorite of the ice creams and sorbets. Though I’ve loved experimenting with healthy and vegan alternatives to traditional recipes, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned thus far at NGI is that if I want something unhealthy, I should eat it. So often we trick ourselves into believing that the imitation products are just as good, but newsflash: they’re not. While vegan ice cream can be great in its own right, save it for when you want vegan ice cream. If you want the real deal, it’s just not gonna cut it.

That being said, the vegan French vanilla ice cream made with almond milk and dried vanilla beans had an excellent flavor. The texture was rather icy (almonds don’t yield a particularly creamy milk, especially when compared with cashews or pistachios), but the taste was spot-on.

The best vegan contender was probably the coconut milk ice cream, thickened with agar. Coconut milk is incredibly rich on its own, so this was a winner- though I swear I can taste agar (seaweed flakes used as a thickener) in recipes now. Not exactly bad, it just makes things slightly…off to me.

Since most fruit-based ice creams and sorbets are slightly icy, the fruity vegan desserts were much more appealing. There was a gorgeous pineapple, strawberry and banana sorbet terrine that included banana soft serve:

A strawberry ice that I wasn’t too fond of:

An orange sorbet that tasted like a fresh creamsicle:

And the strawberry sorbet I made. It actually reminded me of my strawberry-champagne slushies: just frozen strawberries, lime juice and maple syrup pulsed in the food processor, then popped in the freezer to firm up.

Last but not least, the puddings. There was a tapioca one made with almond milk that was quite tasty, albeit a little strange in the texture department (tapioca pearls are an acquired taste, I think):

A rice pudding sweetened with maple crystals, which yielded a slightly pancake-like flavor that I actually enjoyed:

A parfait composed of layers of chocolate hazelnut mocha pudding and almond cream:

And a tropical fruit pudding, served with fresh fruit salad.

Of these, I enjoyed the chocolate hazelnut mocha pudding, which tasted like strong coffee with lots of sugar (delicious, obviously). Like ice creams, puddings aren’t particularly easy to veganize.

In addition, a classmate whipped up a batch of almond-pulp granola using all the leftovers from the homemade almond milk. She just tossed the dry pulp with maple syrup and apricot jam, then threw in some slivered almonds and walnuts for crunch. It was absolutely amazing and a million times better than all the versions of granola I’ve ever tried.

I guess I need to up my granola game.

Cookie day is tomorrow! The last of the sweet baking days before we move onto bread next week. Have a good night!

Sorbet, ice cream, sherbet or gelato? I have a feeling ice cream and gelato are gonna take home the gold in this contest…