Beverage Recipes

Everything here is something you drink, which sounds obvious until you notice how much of it is doing the job a dessert would otherwise do. These are drinks with body to them, not things to wash a meal down with.

Mango Lassi and Vegan Chocolate Milkshake are both about five minutes in a blender. Vegan Eggnog takes closer to three hours, most of it chilling, and makes about five cups. Horchata is the long one, since the rice has to soak overnight before anything else happens.

Creaminess without cream is the interesting problem, and these solve it three different ways. Horchata gets there by soaking: the starch is already inside the rice and a long soak is simply how you pull it out, which is why rushing that step gives you cloudy water instead of a drink. Vegan Eggnog builds its body from blended nuts and thickens as it chills, so it will look thin coming out of the blender and should. Mango Lassi takes the shortcut of using yogurt, which is also what makes it the one that is not dairy-free.

Badges on each card mark vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free. Mango Lassi is the one to look at twice if dairy is a problem, and a thick coconut yogurt stands in reasonably well, though it will push the drink sweeter and you may want to pull back the sugar.