Strawberry Ice Cream

It's been terribly hot for the last week or so, and I wanted a delicate ice cream to cool off with. I had some amazing organic strawberries in my fridge, so I came up with this recipe. While organic strawberries are quite a bit more expensive, I tend to think they're worth the cost. Check your local farmer's market; they're usually a lot cheaper there! (As always, you might want to read the General Guidelines and Advice before starting!)

1½ - 2 c. strawberries (fresh or frozen and thawed)
2 c. soy creamer
1 c. soy milk
¾ c. sugar
2 T. arrowroot
1 T. vanilla

Mix ¼ cup of soy milk with the 2 tablespoons of arrowroot and set aside.

Slice one cup of the strawberries and set aside.

Combine the remaining strawberries, soy creamer, remaining soy milk, and sugar together in a blender and puree. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and bring to a boil. When the mixture has just started to boil, take off the heat and immediately stir in the arrowroot slurry. This should immediately cause the liquid to thicken (not a lot, but a noticeable amount; it will be thicker when it cools).

Add the vanilla.

Set the ice cream mixture aside to cool. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. Add sliced strawberries in the last five minutes of freezing.

Vegan Caramel Sauce

I wanted to bake a dessert that called for caramel sauce, but all of the brands at the store contained dairy. What's a girl to do? Make her own!

(Note: This is a caramel sauce--not hard caramel--and is thick but pourable at room temperature. I recommend storing it in the fridge and heating it up to drizzle over ice cream, vegan cheesecake, apple slices, and more!)

1/2 c. (1 stick) Earth Balance or other vegan margarine
2 c. brown sugar
3/4 c. soy creamer or soy milk
2 T. arrowroot

Combine 1/4 cup soy creamer with the arrowroot. Set aside.

Melt the Earth Balance in a saucepan. Stir in brown sugar. Add remaining 1/2 cup soy creamer. Bring liquid to a boil and boil for 4 minutes, stirring frequently.

Take the pan off the heat and immediately add arrowroot slurry. The liquid should thicken quickly.

Pour over ice cream! Or store in fridge for up to one week.

Suggestions Welcome!

I bet you love ice cream as much as I do. I mean, what's not to love? Unless you're some kind of freak. And you're not. Unless you're the good kind of freak, which would be OK, but then you'd like ice cream, right?

Anyway. Since this blog is all about vegan ice cream recipes, I'd love you to send me your submissions! I'll publish them and give you credit, of course.

Similarly, if you have any requests, send 'em on. I'll do my best to invent an ice cream recipe to match. The catch is that it has to be vegan and cannot contain cashews, because I'm allergic. Can't even touch them without breaking out in hives. So don't bother sending a request for cow-milk ice cream with bacon and cashews.

Butter Pecan Ice Cream

2 c. soy creamer
2 c. soy milk
3 T. Earth Balance (or other vegan margarine)
1 c. brown sugar
2 T. arrowroot
1 t. vanilla
½ c. chopped pecans (toasted pecans are especially nice)

Mix ¼ cup of soy milk with the 2 tablespoons of arrowroot and set aside.

Mix the soy creamer, remaining soy milk, Earth Balance, and brown sugar in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. When the mixture has just started to boil, take off the heat and immediately stir in the arrowroot slurry. This should immediately cause the liquid to thicken (not a lot, but a noticeable amount; it will be thicker when it cools). Stir in the vanilla extract.

Set the ice cream mixture aside to cool. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. Add chopped pecans during the last 5 minutes of freezing.

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

I like adding the food coloring to give it that unnatural green color. (General Guidelines and Advice for vegan ice cream creations.)

2 c. Silk soy creamer
1 1/4 c. soy milk
3/4 c. sugar
2 T. arrowroot
1 1/2 t. peppermint extract
1/2 t. vanilla extract
a few drops green food coloring (optional)
3/4 c. chocolate chips

Mix ¼ cup of soy milk with the 2 tablespoons of arrowroot and set aside.

Mix the soy creamer, remaining soy milk, and sugar in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. When the mixture has just started to boil, take off the heat and immediately stir in the arrowroot slurry. This should immediately cause the liquid to thicken (not a lot, but a noticeable amount; it will be thicker when it cools).

Stir in the peppermint extract, vanilla extract, and food coloring (if desired).

Set the ice cream mixture aside to cool. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. Add chocolate chips during the last 5 minutes of freezing.

Pumpkin Ice Cream

It's like pumpkin pie in ice cream form. (Check out my General Guidelines and Advice before starting.)

2 c. Silk soy creamer
1 c. soy milk
¾ c. brown sugar
1 c. cooked, mashed pumpkin (homemade or canned; see note below)
1 ½ t. pumpkin pie spice
2 T. arrowroot
1 t. vanilla extract

Mix ¼ cup of soy milk with the 2 tablespoons of arrowroot and set aside.

Mix the soy creamer, remaining soy milk, brown sugar, pumpkin, and pumpkin pie spice together in a saucepan and bring to a boil. When the mixture has just started to boil, take off the heat and immediately stir in the arrowroot slurry. This should immediately cause the liquid to thicken (not a lot, but a noticeable amount; it will be thicker when it cools).

Stir in the vanilla.

Set the ice cream mixture aside to cool. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Note: If you cook your own pumpkin, be sure to use a sugar pie pumpkin or other cooking pumpkin. Jack o'lantern pumpkins are cool for Halloween, but don't make for good eatin'. They're flavorless, watery, and stringy.

Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream

This is perhaps my favorite homemade ice cream. It's thick and creamy and oh-so-sinful. But it also has blueberries in it, so you can pretend it's good for you. (It's a good idea to check out my General Guidelines and Advice before starting to cook.)

2 c. Silk soy creamer
1 c. vegan cream cheese (approx. 8-ounce container Tofutti)
¾ c. sugar
1 T. lemon juice
½ c. soy milk
2 T. arrowroot
1 t. vanilla

1 c. blueberries (fresh or frozen)
1/8 c. sugar
splash lemon juice

Combine soy creamer, cream cheese, sugar, and lemon juice in a saucepan. Heat and mix contents. It will take some whisking to break up the cream cheese and get it to dissolve. While heating, combine the ½ cup soy milk and 2 tablespoons arrowroot and set aside. Once the pan’s contents are boiling, take from heat and add soy milk–arrowroot mixture. The liquid should thicken quickly. Add vanilla extract. Set aside to cool.

Combine blueberries, sugar, and lemon juice in a small saucepan. Heat until boiling and some blueberries have burst. Set aside to cool.

Freeze cream cheese mixture according to ice cream maker instructions. Add blueberries 5 minutes before end of freezing cycle.

Molasses Ice Cream

This is one of the first ice creams I experimented with. My husband loves molasses, so I thought I'd make this just for him. Personally, I don't much care for it, but if you like molasses, this should be just the thing for you. Before you begin, you might want to check out my General Guidelines and Advice.

2 c. Silk soy creamer
1 ¼ c. soy milk
½ c. regular molasses
¼ c. blackstrap molasses
2 T. arrowroot
1 t. vanilla

Mix ¼ cup of soy milk with the 2 tablespoons of arrowroot and set aside.

Mix the soy creamer, soy milk, and molasses together in a saucepan and bring to a boil. When the mixture has just started to boil, take off the heat and immediately stir in the arrowroot slurry. This should immediately cause the liquid to thicken (not a lot, but a noticeable amount; it will be thicker when it cools).

Add the vanilla.

Set the ice cream mixture aside to cool. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

General Guidelines and Advice

1) Amounts. My ice cream maker, like many on the market, holds just over one quart of finished ice cream. Therefore you’ll find that my recipes make roundabouts one quart of frozen delight. To achieve this, you’ll need to have your ingredients add up to about one quart. For example, four cups of soy milk plus sweeteners and flavors; two cups soy milk, one and a half cups soy creamer, and one-half cup of nuts, plus sweeteners and flavors. You get the picture.

I’m not always right at one quart, but usually pretty close. If it looks like your one-quart ice cream maker is about to overflow when you put in the ingredients I call for, just downsize a little.

2) What kind of “milk”? Since this is vegan ice cream, you have a lot of leeway in what you use. You can use soy, rice, almond, hazelnut, oat, coconut, or whatever non-dairy milk you like. If I’m making a coconut ice cream, I always use coconut milk. Otherwise, I generally use a combination of soy milk and soy creamer. The soy creamer adds a some extra fat, which makes richer ice cream. If you want really rich ice cream, use all soy creamer. Or make a coconut ice cream with full-fat coconut milk and swoon with fatty delight. If you want low-fat, go for all soy milk. You could even use reduced fat soy milk if you wanted. Remember, though, the less fat the ice cream has, the less rich it is likely to be. Health vs. taste. Why is life so hard?

3) Arrowroot. Arrowroot is a starch that you can use to thicken sauces, pies, or (in this case) ice cream. You can probably find it in most health food stores in either the baking or spice department. I recommend buying it in the bulk section because it’s probably cheapest that way.

Arrowroot is a tricky ingredient. You must heat it to activate the thickening powers, but if it gets too hot, you kill the magic and you get not thickening. I’ve worked out a way to get this perfect every time, though.

First, mix the arrowroot with about ¼ cup of the milk you’re using. Set this aside. You’ll be heating the rest of the non-dairy and dissolving the sugar into it. Let this liquid come to a boil, then take it off the heat and immediately pour in the arrowroot slurry. Stir it so the mixture gets even distributed. You should feel the thickening effects of the arrowroot almost immediately. It’ll be even more obvious when the liquid cools down (which you have to let it do before you put it into your ice cream maker).

4) Other recipes. I should note that there is an entire book of vegan ice cream recipes called Vice Cream. I haven’t purchased the book because the recipes frequently call for cashew nuts/cashew milk as the liquid base, and I’m allergic to cashews. As much as I love ice cream, I love continuing to live even more.

Commercially Available Vegan Ice Cream

While my blog is mostly about making your own vegan ice cream, you can get some really great flavors already made. I like making my own because I can make whatever flavor I want (even molasses ice cream for my husband), and because for a few dollars in ingredients I can get a quart of ice cream, instead of a little pint.

You can find vegan ice cream in almost any health store, and in some grocery stores. The most popular kinds are made from soy milk, though Rice Dream is made from rice milk (you’d never guess from the name, right?). Sorbet is almost always vegan.

Some common brands of vegan ice cream include: Soy Dream, Rice Dream, Whole Soy (you must try the crème caramel flavor!), Soy Delicious (which is now being marketed as So Delicious in some flavors), and Tofutti. My personal favorites are the Whole Soy pints and the Soy Delicious Purely Decadent pints. The Soy Delicious Li’l Buddies ice cream sandwiches are also wonderful.

If you are lucky enough to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you absolutely must make a visit to Maggie Mudd’s. They have about twenty flavors of amazing vegan ice cream. They’ll make you a sundae, a milkshake, whatever.

I gots me a blog!

Wow! I have a blog! I feel so modern, as the kids say nowadays. OK, so kids nowadays probably say something totally different, but I wouldn't know because I am TOTALLY UNCOOL.

What's important, though, is that however uncool I may be, I can still make good ice cream.

Summer is firmly here and it's time to cool down with some rich, creamy ice cream. Vegan ice cream, to be precise, so as to avoid all that pesky animal cruelty.