When this happens, for about five minutes everyone goes a little heat-crazy and colonises every spare pavement or inch of grass for an imprompu bbq or place to crack open some weak lager and pretend like we're all oh-so-continential, yuh?
After a while though you start to feel like those dogs that featured in adverts telling you not to leave your pet locked in a car, all swivelling eyes and plaintive expressions begging for relief.
What to do in the heat? Bust out the chilled desserts.
I've had a couple of such icy wonders on my to-make list for a while - first up, banana soft serve as championed, perplexingly, by Gwyneth Paltrow.
If that's not enough to put you off, then by all means, this is a recipe that you can't go wrong with: chop up a banana into thin coins, then freeze them overnight. Once they've all set rock solid, blend them with a couple of tablespoons of non-dairy milk of your choice. Add vegan chocolate chips if you like, or a bit of rum, and you get some pretty darn tasty ice cream.
Something else that takes an overnight to make is chia pudding. I know I'm so far behind the curve on this one that the curve can't even see me in its rear view mirror, but still, better late than never.
If you'd have told me about the realities of chia pudding before I got stuck in, I'd have been a little skeptical - so, it's like cold frogspawn, you say? Mmm, tasty - so I'm pretty glad I went into this one without being forewarned.
And it turns out that cold frogspawn makes a decent dessert - I introduced some cappuccino soy milk to a few chia seeds and left the lot in the fridge overnight for something beautiful to happen. Like banana soft serve, I'm convinced that a bit of rum and a few chocolate chips would probably take this from very nice to where have you been all my life?
But then, I think that's pretty much the case for anything I can think of. Rum, anybody?
Banana soft serve is kind of amazing. It's been getting a lot of play this summer here as well. It's so stinking hot! My favorite way to eat it is to blend the banana ice cream with cocoa powder and then after it's ready add small dollops of classic peanut butter. Then with each chocolatey bite, you get a little spoonful of peanut buttery goodness.
ReplyDeleteCold frogspawn is about accurate with chia pudding. I don't mean that entirely negatively since I do actually like it, but I'm surprised that it's become such a craze. I could see the gloopiness (technical term) being very off putting to people.
I have my issues with chia pudding, though I do consume a fair amount of chia, but thinking of it as cold frogspawn is going to make things that much harder. Banana softserve, on the other hand, can do no wrong.
ReplyDeleteApparently Saskatchewan had one of those winters too - happily I missed it all in Austin! Banana ice cream rocks, and so does chia pudding - though I never have the foresight to do it overnight, and usually just stick a batch in the fridge for half an hour, which seems to be enough time. I can get behind spiced rum. :)
ReplyDeleteThat banana pudding sounds right up my alley...but, I'll have to trust you on the chia version. :-)
ReplyDeleteI have never tried the banana soft serve but must. My frozen banana bag is getting a bit large. There's a restaurant here in Philly that serves this--they call it the Banana Whip. Refreshing. And you can never go wrong with chia puddings.
ReplyDeleteYup, banana soft serve with peanut butter and cocoa is my go to dessert fix when it's hot out...unless there's actual ice cream in the fridge that is.
ReplyDeleteI haven't had chia pudding in a while. Frogspawn sounds about right, I actually starting buying the white ones just so it would look less gross :)