Christ­mas is quick­ly ap­proach­ing and with it comes the usu­al; ‘big’ sales at var­i­ous stores, fes­tive mu­sic on the ra­dio, bor­der­line tacky dec­o­ra­tions at some places and most im­por­tant­ly, the an­tic­i­pa­tion of en­joy­ing the sea­son­al food and drinks that are abun­dant at this time of year.

On that list is a favourite of many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, ponche de crème; its deca­dent and creamy tex­ture, rich, sweet flavour and added kick of tra­di­tion­al Pun­cheon rum is a favourite of many. Who can blame us right? Well, every­thing I just list­ed about this sea­son­al favourite may be ex­act­ly what’s wrong with it to some peo­ple for var­i­ous rea­sons. Now, more than ever be­fore, there is an in­crease in al­ler­gies and in­tol­er­ances. This means that more peo­ple are be­com­ing health-con­scious and are al­ter­ing their di­ets.

Ponche de crème is a quadru­ple threat as it con­tains eggs, which al­ready makes it non-ve­g­an friend­ly; dairy, to add in­sult to in­jury, is po­ten­tial­ly harm­ful to those with dairy al­ler­gies and in­tol­er­ances; al­co­hol, which ex­empts those who can­not, do not or should not con­sume spir­its; and fi­nal­ly sug­ar, that’s ob­vi­ous­ly harm­ful to those who are di­a­bet­ic and of course, those who want six pack abs (Car­ni­val is af­ter all, on­ly four months away). How does one go about mak­ing a ponche de crème that would ad­dress all these el­e­ments at the same time? Hon­est­ly, one usu­al­ly does not. The per­son at home who would like to make the drink with­out dairy, sug­ar, al­co­hol and eggs while al­so en­sur­ing that there aren’t oth­er al­ler­gens such as soy or nuts, may just end up with a bot­tle of spiced wa­ter. It is best to make the drink spe­cif­ic to you or your fam­i­ly’s needs. That be­ing said, let’s talk about some sub­sti­tu­tions or re­place­ments.

Dairy

Dairy is the base of the drink and con­tributes to its tex­ture, and to a less­er de­gree, its flavour. Luck­i­ly, there are now a num­ber of al­ter­na­tives avail­able on the mar­ket, many of which are de­rived from non-an­i­mal sources. Ex­am­ples in­clude al­mond, co­conut and hemp milks, just to name a few, and while they dif­fer in flavour when com­pared to an­i­mal de­rived milk, they car­ry in­ter­est­ing nu­ances of their own with flavours that can be com­ple­men­tary to the oth­er in­gre­di­ents of a tra­di­tion­al ponche de crème. Do keep in mind though, that some of these al­ter­na­tives are po­ten­tial­ly harm­ful to those with cer­tain al­ler­gies such as soy or nut al­ler­gies.

Eggs

Eggs in ponche de crème act as a thick­en­ing agent and add to the rich­ness of the drink. It there­fore ac­counts for the mouth­feel of a well-made ponche de crème. While it may be easy enough to ac­com­plish the thick­en­ing ef­fect of the eggs with the use of in­gre­di­ents such as corn starch, ar­row­root flour or xan­than gum, it is not as straight­for­ward to at­tain the rich­ness of egg yolks. Luck­i­ly for you, my friends, I will make it just a lit­tle sim­pler.

Egg yolks are com­prised of main­ly fats and it is specif­i­cal­ly these fats that give cus­tards their mouth­feel. That be­ing said, it is nec­es­sary to add in­gre­di­ents that both thick­en and add some de­gree of fat to your ponche de crème when sub­sti­tut­ing the eggs. Co­conut cream is an ex­cel­lent op­tion to use in tan­dem with your thick­en­ing agent and will get you as close to the orig­i­nal as is pos­si­ble. Again, it is im­por­tant to keep al­ler­gies in mind and to ex­er­cise cau­tion when look­ing for al­ter­na­tives.

Sug­ar

Third comes the sug­ar. This is re­al­ly ob­vi­ous but I’ll say it any­way; sug­ar makes stuff sweet…okay? There’s an­oth­er func­tion of sug­ar aside from flavour that is not as well-known—sug­ar, acts as a preser­v­a­tive. High sug­ar con­tent re­tards the growth of harm­ful bac­te­ria and aids in in­creas­ing the shelf life of your ponche de crème. There are a num­ber of sweet­en­ers on the mar­ket that are read­i­ly avail­able. It is pre­ferred by many though, to go the nat­ur­al route, as chem­i­cal-based ar­ti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers have been dis­cov­ered to cause med­ical com­pli­ca­tions long term. These in­clude chem­i­cals such as as­par­tame and su­cralose. In more re­cent times, ste­via, a plant ex­tract, has made an up­surge on the mar­ket as it is a nat­ur­al, sug­ar-free sweet­en­er. This makes a good al­ter­na­tive to sug­ar as it is quite sim­i­lar in flavour.

Al­co­hol

Fi­nal­ly, we’ve come to the al­co­hol. Al­co­hol acts as a flavour en­hancer (for those who en­joy the taste of al­co­hol), a preser­v­a­tive and of course, an in­tox­i­cant. Many times, al­co­hol-free bev­er­ages or ‘mock­tails’ if you will, lack the flavour pro­file al­co­hol im­parts to drinks. If an al­co­hol drinker con­sumes an al­co­hol-free cock­tail, they can im­me­di­ate­ly tell that there is no al­co­hol present and would like­ly re­mark that it is nowhere close to the re­al thing. For an al­co­hol drinker, a vir­gin mar­gari­ta or vir­gin co­la­da would fall flat.

In or­der to even at­tempt sub­sti­tut­ing al­co­hol, one must first un­der­stand its flavour pro­file. Pro­fes­sion­al tasters have at­trib­uted al­co­hol to hav­ing a cer­tain lev­el of as­trin­gency, some bit­ter­ness, a bit of sweet­ness and fi­nal­ly a burn­ing sen­sa­tion, which is due to its ef­fect on the pain re­cep­tors. The in­gre­di­ents which would, in com­bi­na­tion, pro­vide these flavour el­e­ments to your drink are as fol­lows:

as­trin­gency and bit­ter­ness: strong, over steeped, black tea

burn­ing sen­sa­tion: boiled juice of gin­ger root

faux sweet­ness and bright­ness: a few drops of or­ange peel oil

As for the in­tox­i­ca­tion, trust me, you’re not miss­ing out on much. You will thank me the morn­ing af­ter.