Custard Cream

At the Angelica Kitchen, New York, the Vanilla Cake with Plum Sauce was served with this Custard Cream.

Ingredients

• Take a mixture of one or all of Coconut milk, Cashew milk, Rice milk and Soy milk. These milks are mixed so as not to give the cream any specific taste. This can easily be done by adding warm water to a mixture of cooked rice, cashews, and coconut gratings in the blender and straining the puree. Soy milk can be added later. The total liquid including the sweetener (below ) should measure about 1/2 litre.
• Rice syrup, Maple syrup or jaggery
• Salt
• Vanilla extract of vanilla beans
• Agar agar
Method
Add enough sweetener to the milk so that it is just sweet enough. It should not be very sweet. Add a dash of salt and the vanilla beans or extract so that it tastes good. Add some agar agar (about 2.5 tsps of flakes works with 1/2 litre of liquid or 1.5 tsp powder to 1/2 litre of liquid). Put in a pot on a slow fire and allow it to simmer so that the agar agar dissolves. Put a little bit of this in a spoon in the fridge to check if the agar is enough to set it. If it does not set, add more agar. It should not become hard. If it sets, thicken with a bit of arrowroot powder. Pour over the cake and let it set in the fridge.