Followed recipe, got meh results. What do I do with the thing now?

Cafe Society
1

I decided I’d give a try at making some dessert during this Christmas break, and the first thing I thought about was to make Sicilian-style blancmange. Got what I thought was a reasonably simple recipe here (a warning: it’s in Italian), got the ingredients - almond milk, sugar, cornflour, vanilla, cinnamon and so on, went through the steps, tried the final result… Meh. Bland. It looks and feels like grayish panna cotta - no, actually firmer than that - but just tastes of sugar.

I should have expected it, of course - the flavour of almond milk is quite delicate, and there’s such a lot of sugar. I’m not sure this is an easy recipe to fix.

But in any case, now I have in the fridge a lump of sugary, faintly almondy, gelatiney… stuff. I should just toss it, but is there anything else I could do with it?

2

Maybe pour some melted dark chocolate on it? The bitterness might counter the sweetness.

Just a thought…

3

I’d stir it into tea and coffee as a creamer/sweetener. I assume the heat would melt the gelatin.

Or, my tongue in cheek answer: first you ask yourself, did you follow the recipe. Second, you say a prayer for its soul. Third, you ask for forgiveness. Then, you live with it.

4

Serve it layered with fruit (fresh is better, thawed frozen berries acceptable) and possibly whipped cream (real is better, fake is permissible).

5

Moving to CS.

6

Hm, blancmange to me is a sweet chicken and rice dish that is made with almond milk as the cooking liquid. But then again I do medieval and renaissance cooking. As a dessert you are looking at a pretty bland sugary mess unless you spice it up with something like cinnamon, cloves or black pepper/long pepper.

Perhaps next time zip it up with some spices, I have found that cinnamon always goes nicely in almond based desserts, or perhaps lemon zest? Top it with toasted chopped almonds?

7

Something like this needed almond extract, when you made it. Put peaches or berries marinated in Amaretto on it?

8

It’s basically a cornstarch pudding. Compared to recipes for that, yours has a bit more sugar, and massively more cornstarch (which is a thickener). I think that the recipe may be in error.

(Additional notes: it calls for lemon zest, and no vanilla. Converting weights to volumes can introduce problems – many dry ingredients weigh less per volume unit than liquid ones.)

You’re stuck with the texture. An over-flavored sauce will fix the flavorlessness.

For your next attempt, I’d recommend using a regular pudding recipe subsituting almond milk for dairy milk, and dressing up the result as recommended by the Sicilians.