There is no great vegan alternative to cream in coffee. None.
Okay, okay, yon vegan hordes: before you start sending your poorly written hemp-scented cruelty-free death threats to my in-box, allow me a few 'graphs to speak my mind.
Plain and simple: I love coffee. I like espresso, sure, but I would give it up in a heartbeat if I had to choose between it and coffee. I used to drink it black, or black with sugar, but I really just prefer it with a hit of coffee cream. I know, I know... I'm not a purist, and the cool kids with the designer eyeglasses sneer down their perfect noses at me. Screw 'em.
Anyway, the transition from omnivore to vegetarian wasn't really that hard for me. I never really disliked meat, but I have a long-standing love of tofu, vegetables and grains. I also really like cheese, eggs and dairy. Therein lies the problem, of course, because the vegan police kind of frown on you actually eating animal products when you join The Movement, despite the fact that you really only need a little tiny drop of cream in your coffee.... even just in the morning, and then the rest of the day you'll drink herbal tea? ... please? ...no?
Dammit.
So I've tried the alternatives.
* Soy Cream stuff: too many ingredients, tastes like thick soy milk, which in turn makes coffee taste like hot farty bean juice.
* Soy Milk: see above, with the added result that you need more to lighten your coffee, hence the coffee gets colder AND tastes like farty bean juice.
and, last (and least)
* Rice Milk: seriously: how is this at all "milk"? Thin and cruel like an anorexic sociopath in a pastry shop, you might as well add thinned-out white glue to coffee.
So I decided that I would try the world of nut milks. My mother-in-law bought me a vegan cookbook for my most recent birthday (and thanks, BTW, to those of you who forgot to send even a measly birthday email; I hope you get zits inside your noses) and so I decided to test a few recipes.
Basically a nut milk is made by soaking your choice of raw nut (in our case, cashew and almond) in water overnight. You then drain the water and put the swollen grub-like nuts into Mr. Blender with some water and whiz away. If you have a nice blender, you'll get a smooth white liquid that you can drink as is. If you have a cheap-o blender that you bought to replace the one you burned out fifteen years ago during that Pina Colada phase, you'll get a sediment-y liquid that you have to strain through cheesecloth.
Either way, you'll get a fairly neutral cream-like liquid that works swimmingly for morning oatmeal and sauces, but fails spectacularly in coffee.
The reason, I think, is because any texture at all in coffee is simply not acceptable, especially at the beginning of the cup.
If you've spent a while dunking a (cruelty-free, egg-less, dairy-free... oh god, let's just take it for granted, shall we? Else we'll be here all night...) biscotti into a glass of Vin Santo, you expect to find a few soggy crumbs in your glass (and thus your mouth) afterward.
If, however, you take your first sip of a cup of coffee and get a mouth-feel that's anything less than clear, your brain immediately thinks "Uh-oh, grounds in the cup," or "Uh-oh, someone's been dunking a (c-f, e-l, d-f) cookie in this cup," or "Uh-oh, this cup wasn't washed very well," or "Uh-oh, my wife is trying to poison me," or what have you.
Anyway, this is the big problem for me, and this will be a continuing source of sorrow. I'm willing to try anything, I guess, but I don't know where to go from here. I thought of buying commercial almond milk and then trying to reduce it down to a better consistency but I'm leery of the preservatives in the industrial stuff and I'm cheap. I won't use powdered creamer stuff -- might as well put talcum powder in your coffee as far as I'm concerned -- and any of the liquid non-dairy creamers are just flavoured petroleum by-products.
So I dunno.
What I do know, though, is that 18% coffee cream is really good in coffee. And I miss it.
