Vegan heavy cream how-to

I suppose it would help if I explained how I made all of Martha’s butter-, milk- and egg-heavy recipes vegan yesterday. People did, in fact, call me out and remind me that heavy cream is not vegan. I suppose it doesn’t go without saying that everything I bake is vegan because I haven’t purchased eggs, cow’s milk or butter in over a year. So when I say “milk,” I mean soy, almond, rice, etc.

Heavy cream is another story though. Because milk substitutes are usually fat-free and very low sugar, they simply won’t cause the reaction that full fat cream would.

One cup of heavy cream has 821 calories and 88g fat (54 of them saturated). Soy milk, on the other hand, has just 120 calories and 5g fat (0.5 saturated) in 1 cup. While I knew I’d never be able to up the calorie and fat content to full cream status, I knew I could at least work in some saturated fat.

Enter: the humble coconut. People seem to be afraid of coconuts because of their saturated fat content, but the fruit has medium-chain fatty acids, which I understand are processed differently (better) in the body than the long-chain fatty acids in saturated animal fats.

So…

Vegan Heavy Cream

• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1 cup soy milk (or rice, almond, etc.)

Combine milks and let simmer on the stove until it reduces down to 1 cup. Substitute in recipes as 1 cup of heavy cream.

Reduced

It’s still no where near the nutrient profile of heavy cream, but you now have a much thicker, sweeter, fatter, animal-free milk to work with. I used it for Martha’s chocolate-caramel cookies with great success. I can’t promise it’ll work everywhere, but if it works for caramel, I’d say you’re good to go with just about anything.