Strawberry Coconut Milk "Ice Cream"

The unexpected heat waves in the past few weeks, and the number of April birthday's in our family (4) inspired some recent ice cream making. With our little old Krups brand ice cream maker (still going strong after 10 years) we make everything from frozen custard to frozen smoothies. If you eat the smoothies straight out of the ice cream maker, or within a few hours of freezing, they are all equally superb!

For this batch we made some vegan birthday "ice cream" for my husband who avoids dairy. Since we were planning to eat this ice cream within a few hours of making it, we could just make a smoothie and pour it into the ice cream machine to freeze and it would be a perfect texture. Once frozen for more than a few hours in the freezer however the high water content of this mixture would result in a solid brick of strawberry ice.

Ice Cream makers can be found for as little as $35. It is fun and delicious to make ice creams at home, either the real custard based kinds or just a fruit smoothie poured from the blender into the machine. Note that once frozen any mixture you make will taste slightly less sweet, so adjust the sweetness accordingly. 

For this non-dairy ice cream we blended frozen strawberries, some lemon zest, one can of coconut milk and a few spoonfuls of organic cane sugar. We pureed it all in the blender until it was smooth, and poured it into the ice cream maker to freeze. When it was nearly frozen, we added a handful of raspberries for added color and flavor.

                                 Blending in the raspberries:

The finished ice cream. This was scooped into a container to hold it in the freezer for an hour while we finished preparing dinner. It maintained it's smooth texture until dessert. By the next day however, it was too hard, and you had to scrape it to eat it, so this kind of "ice cream" should be enjoyed without delay!

 

If you don't have an ice cream maker, you can achieve a similar effect by pouring the smoothie into a shallow baking dish and placing it in the freezer. Every 15 minutes take a fork and stir the mixture around a bit. after a few hours you will have a similar result.

Do you make ice creams? What are some of your favorite flavors that you've created? please leave comments below.