No-Dairy Ice Cream

Even though this ice cream is vegan it doesn't mean it isn't bowl-licking good! This recipe is for Chocolate Cherry Vegan Ice Cream. This recipe is from My Man's Belly. She has another recipe on her website for Tropical Avocado Ice Cream. If you like this recipe go check that one out. Let's get started...

Ingredients

• 1 Pound Fresh Cherries (can use frozen or bottled – but bottled cherries need to be drained first)
• 1/4 Cup Agave Nectar
• 3/4 Cup Unsweetened Almond Milk
• 3/4 Cup Coconut Milk (not coconut cream or coconut water – those are all different things)
• 1/2 Cup Unsweetened Cocoa
• 1/2 Cup Coconut Oil

Directions

Pit the cherries and tear them into large pieces (halves or quarters).  There is no need to be precise.

Place the cherries, and any of their juices,  in a medium sized bowl and stir in the agave nectar.

Let this mixture stand for 1 hour at room temperature.

Add the almond milkand coconut milk to the cherry mixture (make sure to vigorously shake the coconut milk to better distribute any of the solids that are inside) and stir to combine.

Tightly cover the bowl and refrigerate until cold (at least 4 hours).

Pour the chilled mixture into the bowl of your ice cream maker and process according to the directions on your machine.

If the cherries begin to clump up, use a rubber spatulato keep things moving along.

While the ice cream is churning…

Add the cocoa powder and coconut oil to a small microwavable container.

Place this mixture into the microwave to melt the coconut oil using short 10 second intervals.  (You can also do this step on the stove top.)

Once the coconut oil is melted, stir to combine it thoroughly with the chocolate.  Make sure that you don’t have any lumps.

Pour the melted mixture slowly into the churning ice cream during the last 2 minutes of processing.  The chocolate will harden on impact with the frozen ice cream.

You can serve this as soft serve immediately or place it into the freezer to harden.

Note: this will harden almost solid when left in the freezer because there is a much higher water content in this recipe than in traditional ice cream. This version is very chocolatey.  You could easily cut the chocolate and coconut oil quantities in half and have plenty of chocolate.  You can also leave out the chocolate entirely if you like (but would you really want to do that? j/k)

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