Strawberry Coconut Ice Cream

If you’ve wandered the aisles of your local health food store in the last couple of years, I have no doubt you’ve seen coconut ice cream. It is rich, creamy, delicious, and dairy free. It also has ingredients like carageenan, gum arabic, locust bean gum, vegetable glycerin, and chicory root extract. AND, it costs upwards of $5 or $6 per pint. Hmmm, I’d prefer to stick to ingredients I actually keep in the cupboard, wouldn’t you?

So. . . if you want your ice cream fix (I totally get it, it’s summer!) and to stick to real food ingredients, give this quick and easy recipe a try. It can be modified easily to create your own flavors and topped with whatever you please.  YUM!

Strawberry Coconut Ice Cream

Yield: 6 servings

Prep time: about 10 minutes

Total time: about 35 minutes

Ingredients:

1 can coconut milk (not light)
2 tablespoons agave or maple syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla bean, ground
1 1/2 cups strawberries, sliced or diced (fresh or frozen)

Directions:

1. Set up your ice cream maker. I like the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment but any ice cream maker like the Cuisinart Ice Cream & Sorbet Maker will work great to make rich creamy ice cream.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together coconut milk, sweetener, and vanilla bean.
3. Add liquid mixture to the ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer’s directions for speed.
4. After 15 to 20 minutes, the ice cream will start to look like soft-serve ice cream consistency. Add the strawberries and continue to process in the ice cream maker for about 5 more minutes.
5. Serve and enjoy!

Special notes:

• If you prefer to make dairy ice cream, simply swap out the can of coconut milk for 2 cups of whole milk.
• Feel free to swap out the strawberries with raspberries, blueberries, peaches, etc. for a different fruit flavored ice cream.
• If you don’t have vanilla bean, simply replace the 2 teaspoons vanilla bean with 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or fruit extract of your choice like strawberry or raspberry (yum!).
• If you prefer hard ice cream to soft-serve consistency, put the ice cream in a bowl in the freezer for about an hour and it will firm up nicely.
• Because this ice cream has no additives, it will become pretty hard in the freezer when leftover ice cream is stored. Because its hard to scoop, I prefer to store it in ice pop molds like these: Silicone Popsicle Molds.