Recipe Test: David Lebovitz's Chocolate Coconut Sorbet (aka Vegan Chocolate Ice Cream)

Not how I envisioned my first Lebovitz recipe on the blog turning out...

From all indications, David Lebovitz has lived a very charmed life. He made a name for himself while working as a pastry chef at Chez Panisse back in the 1990s, an experience that culminated in him writing an acclaimed dessert cookbook called Room for Dessert. Room for Dessert is now out of print, but if I understand correctly, the recipes are included in Ready for Dessert, one of his subsequent books. During his Chez Panisse/Room for Dessert era, he won lots of awards and then decided to fulfill a lifelong dream and move to Paris—wisely leaving California before it transformed into the unaffordable housing hellscape that it currently is. He now writes about food and life in Paris on his website and in the various books he’s published since. Like I said in last week’s post, dude’s made some good choices in life.

Lebovitz’s ice cream cookbook, The Perfect Scoop, holds a special place in my heart. It was the book I used when I first started to make ice cream circa 2010. For some reason, I’ve never purchased a copy for myself, though I have gifted it once or twice. Even over these past few weeks, as I’ve gotten back into (gotten obsessed with?) making ice cream, I haven’t purchased it. I honestly don’t know what’s stopping me. I keep paging through it at the bookstore, and even took a surreptitious photo of this week’s recipe during my last visit to B&N.

I used to peruse novels and political nonfiction when visiting bookstores. Now I just skim through ice cream cookbooks.

Given how much I like the book, I should just buy it. And you know what? I think I’m gonna do just that as soon as I finish this post…and I’ll throw in a copy of The World of Ice Cream for good measure. When they arrive in the mail, I’ll be sure to write up a little post for the blog to celebrate the occasion.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, let’s not bury the lede any longer. I made Lebovitz’s Chocolate Coconut Sorbet recipe twice: once for home testing, and once to bring to a work meeting. For the home testing, I followed the recipe to the letter, and the results were…well, I won’t sugarcoat it: they were bad. And I mean very bad. Sure, it tasted okay. But other than that, it was kind of a disaster. Luckily, for the batch I made for my work meeting, I made some adjustments to the recipe and it came out excellent. So here’s how this is going to go: I’ll run through the process that led to the failed first batch, including lots of photos. After that, I’ll explain the adjustments I made for the second batch, and then wrap things up with some final takeaways.

Attempt #1

The thing is, I’ve made this recipe before. Numerous times, in fact. In the past, it almost always yielded outstanding results. It’s been quite awhile since I last whipped it up, but I’ve done it enough times that I felt very confident the results would be good.

Now I don’t know if I measured wrong or if I was just tired from making too much ice cream this week¹ and botched the recipe somehow (seems unlikely given the instructions are dead simple), but the results were not good. The taste was okay, but the texture was dry, flaky, and grainy. The fam ate it without complaint, but they all agreed that something about the consistency was off. It was almost like frozen fudge, but not in a good way. I’ll say a few more things about the texture, but let me give you the photo rundown of the process first.

Finely chop the chocolate. This is more strenuous than you might think.

Sugar in the pot.

Add the water and heat.

Whisk in the chocolate.

On the left: the coconut milk for the sorbet; on the right, the leftover coconut milk in the second can. One aspect of this recipe that mildly bugs me is that it requires two cans of coconut milk (in order to achieve 2 cups measured out), but you only need a smidge of coconut milk from the second can. Good thing our family emjoys coconut milk curries like this one.

Whisk in the coconut milk until smooth.

Then into the fridge to cool.

I didn’t get a churning video of attempt #1. More evidence that maybe, just maybe, I was stretched a bit thin and rushed the recipe as a result.

Not gonna cut it bruh…

I think that last photo speaks for itself. The most damning aspect was being able to taste and feel the tiny grains of chocolate. It was super off-putting. I remember that in the past I used my immersion blender trick (which I also used when making Jeni’s), to address this, but I’m not sure it would have solved the problem here. The mixture was just too dense and not creamy enough. So adjustments to the recipe had to be made. Onto the second attempt…

Attempt #2

The main adjustment I made was to use only 2oz of chocolate (instead of 8oz) and then about 4oz of dutch-processed cocoa powder.

Second at bat!

The process was the same as above, but this time I got a churn video and a taste right out of the machine.

I helped myself to seconds during the lunchtime celebration of my work gathering:

Now that is the consistency we’re looking for!

I guess you could say this was a success based on my second attempt, but it sure doesn’t feel that way.

Now, some final takeaways about all of this:

1. I’d recommend using 5oz of cocoa powder instead of the 8oz of chocolate that the recipe calls for.

2. You definitely want to let it soften for 5 to 10 minutes before scooping, even with my modifications.

3. When done properly, this vegan ice cream very closely approximates regular chocolate ice cream…and is perhaps even better? (sorry, couldn’t help myself).

The thing that bums me out the most is that Lebovitz’s first appearance on the blog wound up being a bit of a disappointment. I love his recipes, and my effort here did not do his work justice. To make matters worse, as I referenced in the footnote, the smarmy Alton Brown and his “serious” vanilla ice cream recipe proved, once again, to be a foolproof winner. Blech.

Alton Brown bad! David Lebovitz good!

Anyway, that’s all for this week. Check out the recipe index to get a preview of what’s on tap over the next few weeks. And stay tuned for a short post about my new cookbooks once they arrive!

Until then, I leave you with this:

1. I made five different batches of ice cream over the past 6 days. Six if you count last week’s Salted Caramel. Two of the six were for a family event (Alton Brown’s Vanilla and Melissa Clark’s recipe done Coffee style), and the other two were for a work meeting (my supervisor asked if I wanted to make ice cream to celebrate the birthdays of two colleagues, and I said yes…I made Melissa Clark’s Vanilla and attempt #2 of the Chocolate Coconut sorbet).

Probably safe to say I overdid it this week.