Well, when I was asked to write something for this I was delighted as it meant I would have to pull the ice cream maker out from under the recesses of the cupboard under the stairs, dust it off and fire it up. I’d bought the machine off FB marketplace (other platforms are available!) several months ago as I had planned to try several recipes out but never got round to it. So, armed with my instructions, a clean and dry machine, recipe to hand, I was ready.
I’ve already told you about the number of people with dietary requirements for Sunday lunch I cater for, so I thought let’s go plant-based and create a vegan chocolate ice cream to appeal to the wider market! Searching for a simple recipe without lots of unrecognisable ingredients, I came across the BBC Good Food recipe, you can see here. I’ve added more chocolate chips to give a chocolate chip ice cream, but you can leave them out if you’d prefer, or add an oat m!lk chocolate chip instead if you like the contrast.
I have to say, I never thought it would be as easy as it was to make using the machine, and I’ll definitely be making some other flavours to try.
Ingredients
- 2 x 400g cans coconut milk (full fat)
- 175g caster sugar (I used golden as I had it in my cupboard)
- 50g cocoa powder
- 100g Choc Affair dark chocolate buttons (plus an additional 80g chopped or an oat m!lk option)
- 1 tsp sea salt flakes
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp cornflour
Method
- Pour nearly all of the coconut milk into a saucepan, holding back a little in a small bowl for later. Add the sugar, cocoa, chocolate, sea salt flakes and vanilla to the pan. Heat gently, until the sugar has dissolved and the chocolate has melted. Keep an eye on this as it doesn’t take long, so don’t walk away from the pan.
- Mix the cornflour with the reserved coconut milk until smooth. Pour into the hot milk mixture and cook for another 5-10 mins, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens to a pourable custard consistency. Strain any lumps, over a bowl and leave to cool to room temperature.
- Pour the cooled mixture into an ice cream maker and churn for 50 mins until you have a very soft ice cream. Tip in the chopped chocolate, mix for an additional 5 minutes and then turn into a freezable container and freeze for a couple of hours prior to serving. After a couple of hours this ice-cream was easy to serve. When I’ve gone back to it the next day, it was very firm and I needed to leave it for 10 minutes prior to serving for ease of scooping.
The verdict was a resounding DELICIOUS!
