Vegan Soft Serve Ice Cream

 

The sun is shining. The heat is rising. Trees and flowers are blooming. Life is good! With this warmth comes little voices asking "mom can we have ice cream?"  What can I say? They got their mama's love of ice cream! So of course I say absolutely!

This is by no means my invention but it is on our "favorites" list.  It is quick and easy and there are lots of ways to mix it up and add variety.  Not to mention, it is ice cream one can feel good about giving to their kiddos at any point in the day. Oh did I tell you, it is able to be made with one ingredient in it's simplest form? It's true! If you've never tried this your world may soon be rocked!

 

Vegan Soft Serve

 

3 frozen bananas

 

Toss bananas in a food processor.  Allow the food processor to do it's thing.  It may sound a little loud and rough at first but allow the processor to go for several minutes.  The bananas slowly begin to get pureed into frozen goodness.  When the chunks are all gone stop the processor.  Now you can stop right here and enjoy a banana soft serve treat. 

 

 

I like to doctor my ice cream up a bit.  Just as the bananas are starting to get pureed, I like to add 1-2 TBS Peanut Butter, and a splash of vanilla. Viola'. Peanut Butter soft serve. 

Another idea that is equally as good, if not even more delicious? Add 1-2 TBS cocoa powder.  Now you've got yourself some Peanut Butter Chocolate Soft Serve. Pretty amazing, I tell you.

 

Other things that could be added to the mix in the food processor are raw honey to sweeten it up a touch and help reduce the banana flavor. I also like to add a pinch of sea salt occassionaly to get that sweet and salty combo.  I've added coconut oil in batches before to have a more coconut flavored ice cream and to add a little extra fat to my girls diet. 

 

The options are really quite endless.  Sprinkle chocolate or carob chips on top.  Add some diced fresh or frozen fruit. Chocolate syrup drizzle is always amazing.  Imagine all the toppings at those soft serve yogurt places and invent your very own unique creation.  

Going dairy free doesn't mean giving up good tasting ice cream!

Cheers to warm weather, sunshine, spring blooms, and delcious ice cream!

Banana Split (Dairy Free)

The other night after dinner my daughter asked me if we could make a dessert.  It had been a glorious day of sunshine and warmth and a family bike ride so it seemed appropriate to make some ice cream.  I don't know about your home but ice cream is always a hit in our home.  Not just with the kids!

Now when there is a dairy sensitivity tossed into the mix it makes things a little more complicated.  Over the years, I have cultivated this love of making vegan ice creams.  I dream of owning a vegan ice cream shop or truck or cart someday.  Can you imagine those creepy ice cream trucks (or at least the ones here in the city are awful creepy looking) replaced with vibrant colors and fun music, and the best part....vegan ice cream.    Wow.  To me that would be a little slice of heaven.

Well until that truck makes its way into my budget or into my town I am left coming up with creative dairy free desserts for my kiddos in my own kitchen.  The other night I decided to play with creating vegan banana splits.  My girls were so excited to help create a new dessert and by the way they ate it with hardly taking a breathe between bites, I'd say they were pretty darn good.

Banana Split (Dairy-free style)

Step 1)   I made this delicious ice cream that I previously posted on the blog.  I used strawberries because it's what I have left of the freezer from last summer.  Cherries, peaches, or raspberries would be quite fabulous as well.

Step 2) I cut a banana in half.  (I gave each of my girls half of a banana cut in half because my little one tends to get a bit constipated with to much banana).  I think next time we make these I will caramelize the bananas in the toaster oven, simply for the sake of something different. 

Step3) I melted some coconut oil in the toaster oven.  Coconut oil is hard at room temperature (or at least until summer hits and the temperature in our house soars).  Once the oil liquified I added some cocoa powder and sweetener and stirred until it was well combined.  I substituted carob powder for the girls, I mean it was after dinner and close to bed time...I've learned my lesson the hard way about how the caffeine in chocolate affects my girls. For the sweetener I used raw honey, which makes it not truly vegan so if you don't use honey other options might be agave, pure maple syrup, or a less refined granulated sugar.  More to come at a later post on sweeteners....


The really neat thing about using coconut oil is that when it cools it becomes hard.  I don't know about you, but one of my favorite ice cream toppings as a kid was that Hard Shell Chocolate stuff.  I loved it.  The above simple recipe creates an easy, 3 ingredient, hard shell chocolate topping. YUM!

Step 4)  I built my banana split.  I scooped some strawberry ice cream in between the banana halves.  I drizzled the chocolate/carb sauce on the ice cream.  I topped it with some shredded coconut and carb chips.  Viola'.

Step 5).  Our family of 4 savored and enjoyed every single, delicious bite!

Vegan Pumpkin Spiced Ice Cream

  

Vegan Pumpkin Spiced Ice Cream

1 can coconut milk
1 cup coconut milk beverage (or any other non-dairy milk)
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree (or canned pumpkin)
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/8 tsp. ground ginger

Combine ingredients in blender.

Allow mixture to chill in fridge for 1-2 hours.

Process in ice cream maker or allow to "set" in freezer.

Tips:

If you start with chilled coconut milk and non-dairy milk beverage it takes less time to chill mixture.

Full fat coconut milk makes the creamiest ice creams but I usually stock up on Trader Joe's (when I get to one!) coconut milk, which has less fat but also costs less.  It works just fine and makes a great ice cream.  

I like to minimize sugar in our life so I usually try to use maple syrup or local raw honey as sweeteners, but you could play with lots of other sweeteners and also the amounts. 

Chocolate DIVINE Ice Cream (Vegan)

 

I know I've mentioned my love of ice cream before but it has become this fun little hobby of sorts.  I love playing around with making ice creams that are actually nourishing and good for me and my family.  It's quite exciting when one comes together well and my husband says "this is better than regular ice cream."  That's when I know I've got a keeper! The one I'm going to share with you today has been our favorite the last couple weeks.  We've made it more than a few times!

I will add a disclaimer here.  I haven't given this to my kiddos.  I learned the hard way that cacao doesn't work for them.  Cacao is raw chocolate.  It is full of amazing antioxidants and is considered a super food, because it is raw and unprocessed.  This is good news to those of us that love chocolate! 
Cacao has some 'energizing' qualities to it.  I made my girls a healthy, sugar free, cacao pudding one night and was so excited to give it to them.  They of course loved it.  The part I didn't love was that they were up until 2:00am!  Wide eyed and ready to go! Lesson learned the hard way.  No more cacao for my kiddos.  I've even had to be very careful when I consume cacao around my nursing times because for a while eating anything containing cacao and nursing my little one would completely ruin her nap time or create a middle of the night waking.  So that's the disclaimer. The GREAT news is that if your in need of little pick me up with out wanting to reach for the coffee or processed chocolate this could be your answer.

I usually try to share recipes that aren't to labor intensive and don't require too many kitchen gadgets.  As busy mama's it's enough trying to run after kiddos and have quality time with them.  We want to feed them healthy, wholesome foods but not have that consume us, right?  Well a lot of these ice creams honestly do turn out better with an ice cream maker.  You can always freeze them in the freezer after blending them and wait until they've frozen to eat them.  I have just found that an ice cream maker produces a much better product.  We actually were given our little ice cream maker by some friends who got 2 for their wedding.  At the time I hadn't really gotten into making ice cream yet but I thought why not, they are giving away a kitchen gadget.  Well thankfully we took it! I LOVE it.  Another set of friends had one that they kept seeing appear at a family white elephant gift exchange, and finally they realized they could actually use it.  So you never know!  Ask around. Someone may have one in the basement they are just waiting to give away.  Or I know Costco has a double (or at least they did a year ago) for a very reasonable price.  (I believe it was under $40 but don't quote me on that).  It's worth the investment if you've opted to go dairy free or you just love ice cream that can actually be good for you too.

I hope you enjoy!



Chocolate DIVINE Ice Cream

*1 can chilled coconut milk (a couple hours in fridge)
*1 frozen banana
*1/4 cup cacao (or substitute cocoa of choice)
*1 1/2 tsp vanilla
*1/2 cup coconut oil
*1/2 cup agave (or maple syrup or raw honey)
*frozen raspberries
*vegan chocolate chips (or regular if you prefer)

• Mix Cacao, Coconut Oil, and Agave together in blender until you get a chocolate syrup like consistency.
• Add Coconut milk, banana, vanilla.  Blend until smooth.
• Add to ice creamer maker and process.
• During the last 5 minutes add frozen raspberries and chocolate chips.  

Mango Sorbet

I know I've mentioned this before but I love ice cream.  This love of mine doesn't go well with my dairy intolerance.  So I am constantly trying to come up with new non-dairy ice creams.  My girls are loving it too.  In fact one evening a week ago we'd been grazing a bit that day on random foods and we got home a little late and no one was real hungry for dinner.  So what did we do....we had ice cream for dinner.  It was awesome.   I didn't feel a bit bad about it either.  It was homemade and loaded with strawberries, bananas, almonds, and coconut milk.  Perfect ending to a very long, hot day.

I usually try to use local fruits that we've frozen for our ice creams, but this was an exception.  Randy had stopped at the store recently and came home with quite a few mangoes because they were having a stellar deal on them.  Well I pretty much forgot about the mangoes because our fridge is packed with all the fruit we've been getting at the farmers market.  I realized yesterday that they had gotten a bit soft so I peeled and froze them, with the intention of making something yummy out of them.  Well this is what I came up with last night.  So so good!

Mango Sorbet

Frozen mangoes

Pineapple (Canned or fresh)

Shredded Coconut

**I didn't measure things out but just added a bit at a time into the food  processor and played with consistency.  I froze 3 mangoes and by the end of the evening they were all gone.  (Norah and I did make a small batch for a snack as well earlier in the day!) I used almost half of a can of crushed pineapple but not much of the actual pineapple juice it was packed in.  I added in just a little bit of the shredded coconut while the mangoes and pineapple were mixing.  I then topped our bowls with a sprinkle of the shredded coconut.   My girls weren't huge fans of the texture the coconut created but of course it was ice cream so that didn't stop them for to long.

Viola' a yummy sorbet you can feel good about giving your kiddos, even if they didn't eat dinner!

Strawberry Vegan Ice Cream

I LOVE ice cream.  Really, really LOVE ice cream.  Especially when the heat of the summer sets in.  Oh my goodness.  It's always been my indulgence.   When I have it and I eat it slow and treasure every bite and don't feel a bit bad about it.  Now my stomach on the other hand doesn't have this same agreement.  I don't tolerate dairy well.   I had no problem giving up milk, cheese, yogurt, or any other dairy products when I realized years ago that dairy was the culprit to my feeling ill.  Now ice cream was a whole different story.  That's the one thing I had a hard time giving up, and really would just say forget it and eat it anyway.  But I would pay for it with feeling very ill.  It got to the point that my husband would start gently reminding me of the way I would soon feel after eating and request I not order it because he really didn't want me to feel sick and ruin our day.  I realized I needed an alternative.  Soy ice creams, Rice Dream Ice Cream, sorbets...none of them were cutting it for me.  And then I discovered Coconut Ice Cream.  That was it! Creamy and rich.  A very close alternative.  There aren't a lot of offerings for flavors but they are oh so good.  Now the only problem with this is that they are quite expensive so I had to pick my ice cream eating indulgences carefully and on special occasions.

After having my first baby, I was very careful to eliminate all dairy from my diet while I was nursing.  I had read a lot about the issues a lot of babies have digesting dairy, even in the small amounts they are getting from their mama's milk.   Sometimes babies can have symptoms that are quick to be labeled colic simply because they are having reactive issues from things in their mama's milk or formula.  Dairy is probably the biggest trigger of a lot of these symptoms and issues in new babies.  So I decided to be extra diligent about removing all dairy from my diet while nursing, which was benefiting not only my baby but me as well.

So this continued my non-dairy ice cream quest.  And I am happy to report after several years of experimenting and looking for recipes I finally have some fabulous VEGAN ice cream recipes that I LOVE.  In fact, ice cream making has become a fun little hobby around our house in the summer.  My girls get real excited when they see us pull the ice cream maker out or we talk about making ice cream.  At this point they have no clue that there are all these cute little shops where you can walk in and buy ice cream.  All they know is that mama makes ice cream.  It's a kind of funny thing. 

This is our favorite vegan ice cream recipe for several reasons.  First, because it tastes so good.  Second, because it's quick and easy and I always have the basics on hand to make it.  It also doesn't require an ice cream maker but just a good food processor (perhaps even a good blender could do the job)  There is no prepping or chilling ahead of time.  It's one of those "it's really hot tonight and I think I want some ice cream right now" kind of recipes.   I hope you enjoy!

Strawberry Vegan Ice Cream (recipe adapted from The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup almonds (or walnuts, pecans,...)
1 cup frozen sliced bananas
1 cup frozen strawberries (can substitute any frozen fruit you have on hand)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 to 1/2 cup coconut milk (full fat coconut milk makes for a creamier version or you can substitute other non-dairy milks)


Directions:

Place almonds in food processor and pulse until coarsely chopped.  Add frozen fruit and bananas.  Pulse until fruit is coarsely chopped.  Add milk, a little at a time, through the top of the food processor until it reaches a creamy consistency.  Viola.  Homemade, wholesome vegan ice cream. 


This is best if eaten directly after it is made.  It is possible to freeze it and eat later but it won't taste quite as delicious. 

When we make this just for my husband and I we will sometimes add a little chocolate syrup or some vegan chocolate chips.  Amazing!

If your not introducing nuts yet to your little one you can omit the nuts and still have a delicious creamy dessert to share with baby!

The coconut milk can be omitted and homemade raw almond milk added to adapt this to a raw vegan ice cream.  Possibilities are endless!

Happy Ice Cream Making!

Stay tuned this summer for more vegan ice cream recipes.....