Vegan Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream
Most store-bought ice creams - even the vegan options - are full of refined or excess sugar, additives and other ingredients that are terrible for you.
Since we discovered the at-home ice cream machine, we’ve been on a mission to create our own all-natural ice cream free of dairy, gluten, and refined-sugar while still tasting great. Our current favorite is this chocolate recipe. It’s truly delicious, easy to make, and uses minimally processed, natural ingredients that your body can actually put to use - even the chocolate.
To give it a rich chocolate flavor, we use cacao - both the raw powder and in dark chocolate. It’s the ultimate superfood. Cacao is rich in magnesium as well as B Vitamins and antioxidants, which help to reduce inflammation in the body. It’s also great for elevating your mood, boosting your immunity, and can even be…ahem… an aphrodisiac.
We recommend eating this ice cream fresh out of the machine while it has soft-serve texture but it can be stored in the freezer for up two weeks. We love to have a pint ready in the wings for the inevitable sweet craving, but it also makes for a great hostess gift or dinner party trick. Our guests can’t believe the DIY or the incredible taste considering what’s not in it.
Vegan Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream
SERVINGS About 1 PINT
Ingredients
1 13.5 oz can of full-fat unsweetened coconut milk
1 13.5 oz can unsweetened coconut cream
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon Himalayan sea salt
1/2 teaspoon organic vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped dark chocolate (at least 70% cocao, dairy & refined-sugar free)
METHOD
Make sure the bowl of your ice cream machine is frozen.
In a Vitamix or other high-powered blender, blend the coconut milk, coconut cream, maple syrup, cocao powder, salt and vanilla until smooth and creamy.
Chill the mixture in the refrigerator for at least two hours.
Transfer the chilled mixture to your ice cream mixer and frozen bowl. Mix according to the manufacturer’s directions until it’s cold and creamy and no more liquid is present.
Add the chopped chocolate to the mixer and continue mixing until all of the pieces are evenly folded into the ice cream.
Serve right away for a soft serve texture or store in the freezer for up to two weeks. If you freeze, let it thaw at room temperature for 15 minutes before scooping.
Tips
If you’re like us, sometimes one pint wont cut it and we need to double the recipe. However, the bowl for the ice cream machine isn’t big enough to make that much ice cream at the same time and, after one use, the bowl begins to defrost and warm. To save time refreezing that bowl, buy and freeze an extra bowl so you can make your second pint immediately after the first.
Be sure to use pure maple syrup. Many store-bought maple syrups are just sugar-heavy syrups with maple flavoring.
Things you might need
