First Recipe! Coconut-Magnolia Sorbet on Gingerbread Flowerets

Here we are posting our very first vegan recipe!

For the occasion we thought of posting something very fancy and special, helping at the same time the promotion of veganism!

Virginie, of Absolute Green, entered a blog-wide coulinary contest in her native France with a vegan recipe. She is the only vegan contestant and she is looking for supporters!

Therefore we thought of helping her advertise her gourmet recipe here: she truly deserves some recognition! The challenge was to create recipes with flowers: a hard task in our opinion! What Virginie came out with in our opinion is very impressive and we cannot wait to try it out.
Beside, who can resist a gently blue ball of ice cream?

Here is Virginie original post and recipe:

Leeloo, of the blog Quoique asked me on several occasions to take part in his contest “Power to the culinary imagination” by submitting some of my recipes with flowers. But such a contest well deserved a little creative effort…
I wanted a recipe as accessible to city people as to those with gardens and green meadows available (for example, the flowers of elder tree aren't available to many people…), and the recipe should as well present multiple approaches to cooking with flowers (fresh, dry, essential oil and floral water). A slightly eccentric idea came to me at last, and you know how it is: when one has an obsession… The only risk being I could test the recipe only last Monday. Luckily, it was superbly successful.
My perfectionist tendency will note two defects:
1- too fascinated by the color, I had the hand a little too heavy on the methylene blue, which bequeathed a back bitter taste to the ice - do not seek the color of a cornflower sorbet, a bluish ice will be enough.
2 - I wanted to put a ball of ice on a gingerbread slice in the shape of floweret. However, since I was due to help out at the restaurant du Petite Manor all the weekend, I ended up staying over at my mother's and testing the recipe there: her ice spoon formed balls larger than mine, i.e. a ball of ice was almost as large as a floweret…

Let us pass these details, I propose the recipe to you:

Coconut-magnolia cornflower buttons
It is the plastics technician Yves Klein who has first modified the traditional use of the methylene blue (used to disinfect throat and urinary tracts, and in particular as a relief for diphteria) to fit in other fields. One of the performances of this artist consisted in asking someone to drink a liquid with the methylene blue, so that the participant urinates blue thereafter. I took as a starting point this idea to create a sorbet with the intense color of field cornflowers. No “bad” surprises: the amount of blue recommended here will not dye your urine…

For this recipe, an ice cream/sherbet maker is necessary. No need for a sophisticated one(mine is an old woman model inherited by my grandmother, so that you know), a simple machine with a capacity of half to 1 liter will make the deal. If that's not available to you, follow this method:
1. pour the cream in a plastic vat which you will deposit with the freezer.
2. as soon as the ice solidifies, pass it in the mixer.
3. pour it in your vat again and leave it in the freezer at least half an hour.
The fructose (fruit sugar) is a more intense sweetener than sugar. Here in particular it is also beneficial since it sweetens without bringing in other flavours (cane sugar would have masked the perfume of magniolia) and because it is colourless (since I wished to exploit the colours).

In the mouth, the flavour of coconut leaves room to that, very delicate, of the flower of magniolia in a perfect continuity.

Ingredients
-500 ml of coconut milk
-4 table spoons of fructose
-2 essential oil drops of magniolia (in herbalist shops, check that your oil is pure and natural - criteria HEBBD)
-1 dash of methylene blue (sold in pharmacies) and two water drops

Preparation
Whip the coconut milk with the fructose.
Dilute the methylene blue in one or two water drops and mix with the coconut milk. Attention, this blue stains. Put on latex gloves and protect your working area with a plastic bag while handling the powder.
Pour this cream in your ice-cream maker which you will place in the freezer. As soon as the beaters stop, put in your sorbet the essential oil drops of magniolia and let again set in the freezer, for at least half an hour.
You will store your sorbet in the refrigerator half an hour before forming your balls.

Matricaire (German Camomille) and Dianthus Gingerbread
With this consistent, slightly exotic and very floral sorbet, I associated a spiced bread, which makes this dish even more special. Matricaire is German camomile. Coarser in appearance, it does not have the unpleasant bitterness which turn many people off the regular camomile, and enchants by its apple taste. In addition, the medicinal virtues of these two plants are similar. At the end of May, the matricaire is not in bloom yet. But one can get it dry easily in herbal or organism stores. This flower softens the hotness of the spices, and gives the depth and the fruitiness so appealing in this cake.
I added to it a little orange tree water to fully develop its perfume.
The Dianthus, many are its varieties (India, Of The Poets, etc) is edible and brings a strong spiced note. An astonishing flower which has already bloomed. Take advantage of it and plant some in your gardens and balcony flowers stand (but especially make sure not to eat the flowers cut by the florists - they are treated).

Ingredients
-200 G of German wheat flour
-150 G of beet sugar
-115 G of buckwheat flour
-40 G of of pine nuts
-200 ml of water
-3 tablespoons of Matricaireflowers
-3 tablespoons of Dhiantus flowers
-2 tablespoons of liquid soya cream
-2 tablespoons of sugar muscovado (very black sugar)
-1 tablespoons of floral orange tree water
-1 tablespoons of cider vinegar
-1 tablespoons of maple syrup
-1 tablespoons of lupin flour of (or chick-pea flour)
-1 tablespoons of arrowroot (or of maïzena)
-2/3 tablespoons of powdered spices for pastry making (my mixture contains cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander, clove and mild Jamaican pepper)
-1 die of fresh ginger
-1 coffee spoon of baking powder
-1 coffee spoon of edible bicarbonate

Preparation
In a pot, combine the matricaire and water. Bring to the boiling point but turn the fire off right then. Cover and let infuse a quarter of an hour.
During this time, mix in a salad bowl all the dry ingredients (except pinions and Dhiantus), and in another bowl the other liquid ingredients. Detach the petals of Dhiantus from their corolla.
Pass through a fine colinder the matricaire infusion and mix it with the other liquid ingredients (press the flowers soaked in water with a fork to extract the most liquid from them). Create a well in the dry ingredients and pour the liquids inside. Mix well. The paste will be thick. Add the pinions and petals of Dhiantus. Mix again. Pour in an oiled cake mould and put in a preheated hoven and temperature 4 for 1h - 1h 10 minutes. Let cool.

And the final key…
Unmould and slice your cake. Cut out flowerets using a cookie cutter.
Place a ball of coconut-magniolia sorbet on a floweret.
And if the balls are too large for the flowerets, then, well juxtapose them. This works very well also… you can decorate the plate with Dhiantus flowers like in the picture above.
Guaranteed effect!

Alternatives: my mother asked me to make again the gingerbread for her. Having done it for her, I took the first loaf with me to Nantes without guilty feeling, cut it out in small heart shapes with a cookie cutter, coated them with chocolate melted with the bain-marie method, and, after cooling, offered them to my friend in a tea box.

Did you like this receipt? Appointment on the blog Quoique to discover other receipts with the flowers and play the game: vote!

Votes can be casted by anyone until June 7th, midnight, Paris time!!! Virginie entry is number 17.

Recipe and post republished with permission of the author.