My boys love this vegan Strawberry Ice “Cream.” I made a batch and it was gone in a couple of hours. So I made more and my husband got in on the act, consuming his share.
It is made with a coconut milk base and I added quite a bit of vanilla, in hopes of drowning out the coconutty flavor, as I did not want to make a coconut ice cream. I think I succeeded, though you all can be the judge of that.
Strawberry Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
Ingredients
- 1 13.5 ounce can full fat coconut milk,
- 1 10 ounce package frozen strawberries
- ¼ cup agave nectar or honey
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla beans , optional
Instructions
- Blend all ingredients in a vitamix
- Pour into ice cream maker and process according to instructions
- Serve
I hope you all enjoy this quick and easy, healthy frozen dessert recipe. I love that it meets the needs of of people on gluten-free and dairy-free diets. If you’re wondering how to make ice cream without an ice cream maker, see my quick and easy 2-Ingredient Banana Ice Cream recipe.
To make this I used my Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker
which you can find here. We used it for the class that I taught last summer, however we made the Vegan Vanilla Ice Cream that time.
Recently, CoconutGal contacted me about posting some of her photos of my recipes in the Elana’s Pantry flickr group. I look forward to seeing her pics there and yours too!
V says
I just had my first ice cream making AND my first non-dairy ice cream making experience! Yay me. ;) I used strawberries from our garden. The flavor was fantastic. The texture was grainy though. I’m not sure if I did something wrong. My machine is very old. And I used puréed strawberries. Any ideas for next time?
Stacy Hackney says
I’m just learning about ice cream and frozen desserts but if you’ll take a novice’s guess, I think your product was grainy because the ingredients you used, coconut milk and strawberries, are mostly water, and if you blended them using fresh strawberries, even with the addition of the other ingredients, what you’ll mostly have after freezing is flavored frozen water. I wish I knew more at this point in my learning curve but I don’t so I can only tell you what I’d do to try to improve the consistency, or reduce the iciness. First idea, you can take your frozen product and put it into your food processor and process until smooth. I think that will aerate the mixture and break up some of the larger ice crystals. Put the frozen mixture back into the freezer to freeze and hopefully that will improve the texture. Be sure to have chilled the bowl you’re using so that your freezer won’t have so much heat to remove from the container/mixture. Second, you can add alittle xanthum gum to your blended mixture before you freeze it, which should improve the texture. There are other gums you can try, many are food grade and many are considered safe but you can research and see which one might interest you. I’ve read good things about gellan gum but it’s a gum that needs to be heated to activate so if you heat the coconut milk with a little of the gum, and then cool it and then add your other products, that could possibly work. netrition dot com sells several gums (though unfortunately not gellan) if you want to try some and Amazon sells them too. Of course you can add heavy cream or evaporated milk or products that have less water in them, to improve texture. Another food that I’ve read improves the consistency of frozen desserts is nonfat milk powder. Another option you can try is adding in a little avocado to see if that improves the texture without impacting the flavor too much. I don’t know what your food restrictions may be and as I said, I’m at the beginning of my learning curve, but if I wanted to try this recipe and it came out icy, I think I’d try a little gellan gum mixed into warmed coconut milk, let it cool, and then add everything else in the recipe into your blender and blend until absolutely smooth, leaving no chunks of strawberry (ice crystals hide out in strawberry chunks) and then process in your ice cream maker. You can also add a tiny amount of alcohol, maybe a tablespoon, which I understand improves the texture as well and if you add only a little shouldn’t impact the flavor. Best regards. P.S. I’ve learned what I know so far about frozen desserts by looking at various Youtube videos. Emery Thompson is a great batch freezer and the owner has many videos, and though many of the videos are predominantly about their batch freezers, they always discuss ice cream and you can learn a lot, even though what they usually discuss is dairy and sugar, it helps to give the viewer an idea about produces nicely textured frozen desserts. Another great resource is ice cream nation, which is where I learned about gellan gum; the gentleman used it in one of his gelatos, I’m sorry I forget which one. I also like Chef Steps on Youtube, which showed in their delicious chocolate gelato video (which is actually a sorbet recipe) how to use various gums. Good luck with your frozen dessert adventures.
Jen says
Elana
I’ve come across a few coconut milk ice cream recipes and am wondering about the use of eggs. Have you tried any coconut ice cream recipes using eggs?
Oh, PS, LOVE your recipes!!
Thank you
Monica Pelletier says
We picked 30lbs of strawberries! Used some for this–omg! so good! I chopped up strawberries and added those too for extra yumminess! Might add chocolate shavings next time
Karen says
Elana – I have a cusinart soft serve ice cream maker yet to use since all the recipes are whole milk based. Can’t have dairy and I try to stay skim for my kids. Will this recipe work?? Well, I’m gonna try and I’ll let you know:)
Andrea says
My friend brought over a container of this ice cream for me to try. Loved it! Thanks for the recipe!