Yet Another Pumpkin Mousse

 Every year there has to be a pumpkin flavored dessert for Thanksgiving. This year is another vegan pumpkin mousse.It's a different spin on the traditional pie,.

I found the recipe on Delish Knowledge, a blog started by dietitian Alexandra Caspero. I scanned over several  vegan dessert recipes in the past week and saw this. It had me at aquafaba, chickpea bean water that can be whipped into a yummy meringue. This looked good. However I didn't realize just how labor intensive it was.

First of all I decided to double the recipe, knowing there may be one extra visitor on Friday. I had to use half a cup of maple syrup, 1 and 1/3 cups Libby's pureed pumpkin , two teaspoons of pumpkin spice and two teaspoons of vanilla extract.

It was the just mashing everything together. Then came the cream, made with solidified coconut cream.

This took about twenty minutes to half an hour to get the same consistency as regular whipping cream. I used my stand mixer which is pretty powerful., After it was the cream was relegated to the fridge. Then it was onto the third leg of the recipe.

It's mixing one cup and a third of the chickpea water along with half a cup of powdered sugar and half a teaspoon of cream of tartar. This produced a very stiff and perfect meringue as always. The pumpkin mix was added. Unfortunately I made the mistake of adding all the coconut cream instead of a small amount. It lost its' pudding like texture and became soupy.

I'm hoping a night in the fridge will set it, especially with the properties of the coconut cream. The flavor's not bad, sort of a marriage of maple, pumpkin and coconut, the last unexpected. Will  I make this again. Yes, but without the coconut cream. I feel it sort of ruined the texture. Hours later , it's still a big soupy disaster.

This vegan pumpkin mousse is a different alternative to pie. It's tasty and hopefully will set into a kind of pudding mousse hybrid. It'll be a nice dessert after a full Thanksgiving meal.

Aquafaba Meringues Finally

What do you do with left over chickpea water? Turn it into meringue and fake marshmallow fluff!  I had some left over from my chickpea stew the other night and that created the itch to literally whip up meringues. This time , they turned out picture perfect.

I used the recipe from It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken blog and I think it was one of the best. Before you do anything line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. You can attach it with a dab of meringue. I didn/t I laid a jar of salt on it to flatten the paper.

It starts with a cup of aquafaba. Mine came from Stop and Shop chickpeas.

Then add in 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract ,.I used my favorite Nelsen-Massey.

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Then 3/4 cup of granulated sugar.

It was mixing the first three ingredients, using first a stand mixer than a hand held one with a balloon whisk. The recipe said beat for six minutes, adding a spoonful of sugar  until everything is completely  mixed. It took me fifteen minutes to get the meringue into stiff peaks. Then it's dropping them by teaspoon on the parchment. This recipe makes a lot of meringue. I had to use two cookie sheets I baked on on the oven's center rack and the extra on the top most for two hours in a 200 F.  degree oven.

Imagine my surprise when they came out perfect!.  I turned off the oven and then let them dry out in a cooling oven. 

Their shapes were perfect, so different from that gooey mess I made last summer (the weather could have something to do with it).

The baked ones had a slight chickpea flavor which I'm going to amend next time. I may add cocoa or coffee flavoring. The texture was perfect airy and crunchy.

I had a lot of batter left over.  You have to bake it  more or less in one shot. However I had a whole tub left over. Tasting it reminded me of marshmallow fluff . What does that pair with? Frozen dessert! I scooped a big glob on Reveri Chocolate Forest and YUM!

This is my new favorite topping. It's even better than whipped. cream.

This was a fun experiment with exciting and unexpected results. I will definitely vary the recipe to try different flavors.like coffee and cocoa. maybe even peppermint.

Try this recipe for vegan Christmas cookies, It's a truly an interesting  bake!

When Life Gives You Aquafaba

Aquafaba is one of the newest darlings on the food scene. It is the siren for foodies like myself and I was over eager to bake aquafaba meringues.How hard could it be? It seemed everyone who ever made the little puffs of sweetness had success. I knew I would too.

I was wrong.

I started with the right ingredients.

Bean water from Rienzi chickpeas.

Sugar

Salt  and cream of tartar

Flavoring - peppermint

Even chocolate chips.Everything was whipped up, in first my standing mixer

I thought it was going well, although the liquid refused to get thick with stiff peaks.I then tried a balloon whisk on my hand mixer. Nothing happened.I added the peppermint extract and chocolate chips.Bad, bad ,bad idea. The fluff turned to liquid right quick.

I had to pour it on this.

covered in parchment paper.

It came out like this

A giant flat crisp. Yes,I was gutted.I wanted , cute puffy meringue kisses. What I got instead was a layer of gook.,Being thrifty.I decided to bake it as required, in a 250 degree F oven for an hour and a half. Surprisingly, the meringue pizza came out OK, with one side,perfectly crispy while the other was gooey and chewy..

What did I do with this mess? Put Eton in front of it and came up with a spin on the classic English dessert. I broke off pieces of meringue and layered it with whipped cream. Chocolate chips were tossed over it all for more flavor. It went from a disaster to a delicious and fun dessert.

I think my chickpeas and myself are better suited to this.

A tasty grab anything salad(More on that tomorrow)