Vegan Ice Cream

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This vegan ice cream recipe is truly the best! It is creamy and smooth and has the perfect ice cream texture. You will definitely not miss the dairy in this delicious dessert!

I have been making vegan ice cream for years and I truly think this is the most divine recipe.    Vegan Ice Cream – Loving It VeganPlay Video

It’s everything you want an ice cream to be, perfectly textured and perfectly sweet, ultra creamy, smooth and of course it needs to be pretty easy to make too and this ice cream really delivers on it all. 

If you love making vegan ice cream then you’ll also love our cashew ice cream and our vegan banana ice cream!

HOW TO MAKE VEGAN ICE CREAM

You start with making homemade cashew milk. It has to be homemade cashew milk because it’s creamy to the extreme and there is no store-bought option that will be this creamy. It’s really more like a cashew cream than a cashew milk. 

To make it, you just soak some cashews in hot water for an hour. So put your cashews in a bowl and pour boiling water from the kettle over the cashews and leave them to soak for one hour. Then you drain the cashews and add them to your blender along with some water and blend up into a very thick and creamy cashew milk. 

Add that cashew milk to a mixing bowl and add some full fat coconut milk from the can and mix that together. 

Then you add some sugar and water to a saucepan and heat, stirring constantly until the sugar is melted. Add chopped cacao butter, coconut oil and salt to the melted sugar and mix in until it’s all melted together. 

Pour this out into the bowl with the cashew milk and coconut milk mix, add in a little vanilla extract and then use an immersion blender to get it all blended together. 

Place the bowl into the freezer for 15 minutes to get the mix nice and chilled, and then churn it in your ice cream machine until it reaches soft serve consistency. Smooth it down into a loaf pan, cover with some foil and place into the freezer to set. 

Of course, don’t forget to freeze the bowl of your ice cream maker in advance (at least overnight). 

VEGAN ICE CREAM INGREDIENTS:

The basic ingredient list is: raw cashews (to make the homemade cashew milk), canned full fat coconut milk, white sugar, cacao butter, coconut oil, salt and vanilla extract. 

All the ingredients in this ice cream work extremely well together to create that perfect ice cream consistency. 

HOW TO MAKE VEGAN ICE CREAM WITHOUT A MACHINE

It is possible to make vegan ice cream without a machine, and we have a couple of recipes that are designed around not needing to churn the ice cream at all, like our vegan cookies and cream ice cream or our peanut butter banana ice cream that is made in a food processor.

However, if you love making homemade ice cream recipes then getting an ice cream machine is very worthwhile. We have a Cuisinart and it is the bomb diggity! I love it! It churns almost any ice cream I make into a lovely soft serve consistency within about 25 minutes (which is fast!).

But, of course if you don’t have one yet then this doesn’t help you! 

What an ice cream machine does is incorporate air into the ice cream while it churns and freezes it. It also helps to keep the ice crystals really small so that it has a lovely smooth texture. 

So the way to cheat this if you don’t have an ice cream maker is to beat the ice cream mixture in your stand mixer if you have one of those. Then place it into the freezer and before it’s frozen, bring it out a couple more times and beat it again. This will come closest to what you’ll get with an ice cream machine. 

Print Recipe

Vegan Ice Cream

Prep Time

60 minutes

Servings

people

Ingredients

• 1 Cup raw cashews Soaked in hot water for one hour
• 270 ML water
• 2 Cup Homemade Cashew Milk
• 1 Cup coconut milk Canned, full fat
• 1 Cup White Sugar
• 100 gm Cacao Butter finely chopped
• 55 gm coconut oil
• 1 tbls salt
• 2 tbls vanilla extract

Prep Time 60 minutes Servings people Ingredients 1 Cup raw cashews Soaked in hot water for one hour 270 ML water 2 Cup Homemade Cashew Milk 1 Cup coconut milk Canned, full fat 1 Cup White Sugar 100 gm Cacao Butter finely chopped 55 gm coconut oil 1 tbls salt 2 tbls vanilla extract

Instructions

1. The day before you want to make ice cream, put the bowl for your ice cream machine into the freezer to freeze.
2. Prepare your homemade cashew milk. Add the cashews to a bowl. Pour boiling water over the top until they are completely covered and then let them soak for 1 hour. After 1 hour, drain the cashews and add them to the blender jug along with 1 cup + 2 Tbsp fresh cold water and blend very well until smooth and creamy. No need to strain this milk and you will use all of it in your ice cream.
3. Add the homemade cashew milk to a big bowl along with the coconut milk and set aside.
4. Then get all your other ingredients ready before proceeding.
5. Add the sugar to a saucepan along with the quarter cup of water. Stir constantly until the sugar is melted. You’ll know it’s melted when the wooden spoon is no longer making a scratching sound along the bottom of the saucepan.
6. When the sugar is melted, add in the cacao butter, coconut oil and salt and mix in until everything is melted together.
7. Add this to the bowl with the cashew milk and coconut cream along with the vanilla extract.
8. Blend everything together in the bowl using an immersion blender. If you don’t have an immersion blender, then transfer everything to your blender jug, blend it and then return to the bowl.
9. Place the bowl into the freezer for 15 minutes to chill. If you find that the mixture has hardened slightly along the sides of the bowl when chilling, then just stir it up again.
10. Pour the mixture into the ice cream machine and churn according to manufacturer instructions until you reach a soft serve consistency. Depending on the ice cream machine you use this could take anywhere from 25-45 minutes.
11. When it’s reached soft serve consistency, transfer the ice cream to a loaf pan and smooth it down with the back of a spoon, cover and place into the freezer to set completely.
12. When the ice cream has set, scoop into bowls and enjoy.

Recipe Notes

• If your batch of cashew milk makes slightly more or slightly less than 2 cups (480ml), don’t worry about it, it should be pretty close so just use all of it in the ice cream. The difference would come about from the amount of water absorbed the cashews while they’re soaking. It won’t make a difference to your end result if it is a little less or a little more.
• Prep time excludes soaking the cashews, chilling the mixture of the time taken for the ice cream to set in the freezer. It is just for the hands on time, including churning.
• Prep time excludes soaking the cashews, chilling the mixture of the time taken for the ice cream to set in the freezer. It is just for the hands on time, including churning.
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