Soy-Free, Vegan Ice Cream Parfait with Gluten-free Quinoa-Orange Cookie Crumble and Organic Sour Cherries

Sounds complicated right?

Ha! It’s two ingredients with an optional third.

Vegan Ice Cream Parfaits (Serves 1)

2 frozen bananas (I put bananas that are getting a little brown in the freezer in a freezer-safe bag. It saves some work if you peel them before freezing)

2 GoGo Quinoa “Crunchy Quinoa Orange Zest Cookies” (or other crunchy gluten-free cookies. Points for homemade!), optional if you want to make this raw

6-8 frozen organic sour cherries, optional (or use frozen grapes or blueberries, or acidic fresh fruit such as oranges or grapefruit that are SO good this time of year)

Instructions:

1. Blend the bananas in a blender (this honestly make the creamiest vegan ice cream ever. And there’s no fat, refined sugar, or gross preservatives or emulsifiers. Seriously, if there’s any kind of gum or ingredient you can’t pronounce in your ice cream, think about whether you should be eating it. Not that it has to be vegan, since homemade ice cream with organic milk from a local dairy makes my heart sing…and my stomach quiver)

2. In a wine glass or something where you can see the layers place a scoop of the ice cream. Crumble over most of one cookie, then place a few sour cherries. Then do another layer of the banana ice cream, then another layer of cookie and some sour cherries. Repeat one more time, topping with the cookie crumble and sour cherries.

3. Take a hot bath and eat ice cream. It’s a delicious physical juxtaposition. Is that the right word? Contrast? Well, the point is you’re sweating but the ice cream is perfectly cold. If you need time to draw the bath, stick the ice cream parfait in the freezer while you wait.

Note 1: My sour cherries were from a local organic farm in the summer. I froze a bunch for just such moments as these. Sometimes you need a treat.

Note 2: The quinoa crunch cookies were from my favourite Montreal health food store, Marché Bleuet on Notre-Dame at Atwater. I usually skip the Atwater Market in favour of this place. I was also really impressed with the cookies themselves. Usually gluten-free means high fat, corn (xanthan gum), and an ingredient list a mile long. Most importantly it usually also means “no flavour”. The orange zest in this was beautiful (and this from a girl who thinks chocolate oranges are the worst Christmas invention ever), and the crunch is hard to beat. I don’t like that the cookies are individually wrapped. That’s a lot of plastic to be throwing out every time you want a cookie, and you’re rarely going t eat just one of these at a time. Still, I appreciate the company trying to keep them as fresh as possible. So it’s a toss-up.