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This month I was actually able to come up with something for Ricki’s SOS Kitchen Challenge. I swear, every month I plan on participating, then I end up forgetting or running out of time. This month’s ingredient happens to be adzuki beans, which was indeed a “challenge” for me. For whatever reason I have a hard time finding adzuki beans in stores around here and I almost decided not to forgo the challenge because of that. Well, the bean gods must have been rooting for me last week, because a can of adzuki beans happened to show up at my grocery store. (Or maybe they were always there and I’ve just failed to notice? Entirely plausible.) Once I brought home that can of beans I thought “Now what?” I had been more preoccupied with actually finding the things somewhere than actually thinking of a recipe to use them in. Like I said, I don’t find them in stores much, so I have only cooked with them a few times.
After searching around on the internet I decided to use those little suckers in a sweet recipe. Adzuki beans are commonly used in Asian sweets. I was aware of that before, but was never brave enough to try putting beans in my dessert. Several places online gave recipes for Red Bean Ice Cream, which is apparently a Japanese specialty. I’ll admit, it still sounded “weird” to me, but I gave it a try anyway for the challenge. It was fairly simple. All I did was made a sweetened adzuki bean paste and stirred it into my go-to vanilla ice cream recipe. I swapped some of the milk in the original recipe with almond milk and added some almond butter to the paste. Voila! I made Almond Adzuki Ice Cream. (Or, Mean Bean Protein-Packed-Ice Cream, as I thought about calling it.)
So, curious to know how it turned out?
It sucked. I don’t know whether I used too much bean paste or whether I am just not a fan of bean-based desserts, but either way I was disappointed. The ice cream was a little too “beany” for my taste. Maybe some people wouldn’t mind that, but I did. If I’m going to eat dessert I don’t want it to taste like what I ate for dinner. The texture wasn’t quite right either. It was more grainy than creamy. Yuck. (I guess those bean gods weren’t rooting for me after all.) Hopefully I’ll come up with something better next month.
Ah!! I feel your pain! I made crock pot adzuki baked beans for the challenge and they didn’t turn out at all. I started with dried beans and they never fully cooked through, BLEH! I’m sure I’d have good results if I start with cooked beans. I may give it another try if I can squeeze it in sometime this week. Sorry to hear about your ice cream!
If it’s any consolation, I’ve never made a bean dessert I liked, either. I even tried buying bean treats to see if the commercial ones tasted OK. They don’t. Beans in desserts aren’t appealing to me — but neither are avocado desserts. Some things are just meant to be savory. I love adzuki beans, though.
I have a can of organic adzuki beans that I’ve been holding on to, but I’ve been thinking more of a salty vein – maybe with rice and soy sauce or the like. Its such an interesting idea to hear about it in a dessert though!
I like beans with sweet sticky rice for desserts, but I’ve only ever had it in restaurants. I’ve never made any – they probably use an obscene amount of sugar, and that’s why it’s so good.
Sorry the ice cream didn’t turn out! I can’t say that it sounds appetizing to me.
So sorry to hear it didn’t turn out! I’ve had red bean paste ice cream in restaurants (ages ago) and remember it as being very mild and not beany–so maybe the recipe requires just a wee bit of the red bean paste. But you deserve kudos for trying! And thanks for thinking of the SOS Challenge, anyway (next month. . . . )
that stinks that it didn’t turn out. i’ve found some bean recipes to be fickle, especially when cooking them from scratch. they all need different cook times, which I usually forget :\
Aww, that sucks! I’m not a big fan of beans in my desserts either. At least now you can say you tried though!
Adzuki beans are among the few types of beans I just can’t bring myself to like (others are fava beans and pinto beans). I’ve been supposed to try them in a Japanese-style sweet dish, but somehow I just never get around to it… probably because I think it will suck.
I think canned beans might not work as well in a sweet recipe as freshly cooked ones.
[...] to make something good for this month’s SOS Kitchen Challenge after last month’s failure. Luckily, this month’s ingredient was something I am more familiar with. The [...]