This week’s dish was a little difficult but probably the most fun so far. I made some new discoveries and enjoyed mixing some nice flavors and the only issue I had, and usually have, is I had no idea what I was doing.

I went in my kitchen, looked around and found random canned goods and frozen vegetables that I would never use. I decided to make a dessert because it is something out of my element and, as much as I love sweets, I am terrible at making them. So, this was a big adventure for me.

I had a huge can of sweet potatoes in a light syrup and, of course, 20 bags of rice. It is important that I mention that this dish took a couple of hours, so if you don’t have a lot of time to make a dessert that takes less than two minutes to eat, choose a new recipe. I also realized I didn’t have all the ingredients to make the dish I wanted to make, so I improvised.

To start, I made rice milk. I have never made rice milk in my life, nor have I ever tasted it, so I was going in blind. I boiled one cup of rice with two cups of water and let it simmer for 20 minutes. After it was done, I mixed half a cup of cooked rice with two cups of water and eyeballed whatever amount of vanilla extract, salt and sugar I desired.

I blended the mixture for about three minutes or so – I wasn’t counting – and when it was fully blended, I attempted to get rid of the pulp. I poured the milk through folded napkins because I do not have cheesecloth and don’t know where to buy it. It was a terrible idea because the napkin was too absorbent and consumed most of the milk. I figured it was better to just pour the milk while holding something on top of the lid to stop the pulp from falling, which allowed me to discover that there was not any pulp at all.

After my milk catastrophe, I refrigerated it and got started on the sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes remind me of Thanksgiving, so I thought it would be cool to make sweet potato pie in ice cream form.

I mixed brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and 1% milk in a larger bowl with an electric mixer. I’m pretty sure ice cream is supposed to have half-and-half or at least whole milk because it was a little thin and I was concerned it would freeze like water. I then blended the sweet potatoes in a blender with the light syrup it came with until it looked like baby food and combined it with my milk mixture. I then froze it with my rice milk and waited.

It would be great to be able to tell you that I did not stay up until 2 a.m. waiting for everything to freeze, but I did. I had planned to mix the rice milk with the sweet potato mixture and layer it with a cranberry sauce and cookie crumble for a Thanksgiving dessert flavor. Unfortunately, it did not come out correctly at all, but the flavor was amazing. It was exactly what I had imagined, but the texture was very thin and almost like a slush.

I would like to try this recipe again someday with the proper ingredients and patience, because I think that played a big role when making this dessert. Overall, I would recommend a major label such as Blue Bell to patent this recipe because it could potentially be a big hit during the holidays. However, until that happens, I will remain making random things in my kitchen.