Editor’s Note: This story is a part of an occasional series celebrating the summer’s best desserts. While you’re here, get to know chelo chelo and cotton candy burritos.
Oat milk is changing lives.
When almonds started getting a bad rap for how much water it takes to grow a single nut—3.2 gallons of water—those with environmentalist eating habits took note for alternatives.
Oat milk, at least for now, seems to be the answer. And it’s catching on in Northern Virginia.
Blend 111, a Vienna restaurant with a full coffee-roasting program, uses oat milk as its standard option for espresso-based drinks. Sidekick, the new bakery attached to Ted’s Bulletin in Ballston Quarter uses oat milk as an option for its housemade soft serve. There’s also an oat-milk whipped cream, that comes out a little smoother and less puffy than dairy whipped cream.
Sidekick’s Snowdays are a bit of a riff on a McDonald’s McFlurry, but the options run more high-end: chocolate peppermint, pistachio, creme brulee and a decadent black sesame cookies and cream, a sleek upgrade in the ice cream game.
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