Usually my ideas for recipes come when I’m dining out and I stumble upon something I like, and I say to myself “Hey, I could make this at home.”
For all you who don’t tolerate dairy well, the best ice cream cream substitution IMHO is coconut milk, and by far the best commercial option is Luna and Larry’s, unless you live in Boston and can get to J.P. Licks for their dairy-free coconut milk option. Buuuuuuuuut, since I would rather not pay $7 for a single scoop of ice cream, and since I’m always trying to do it my way, I figured I’d try out my own coconut milk ice cream recipe.
I’ve made homemade ice cream before with cow’s milk, so I basically followed the same directions except used coconut milk instead. This is a custard based ice cream which means it uses egg yolks which give it a nice smooth consistency.
From my research there are a lot of coconut milk ice cream recipes that just tell you to blend all the ingredients up and throw it in your ice cream maker, but since I’ve done that and since the coconut milk has a good amount of water in it, the end product can end up a bit icey, unless you’re using coconut cream, which I have yet to experiment with.
This is my third try with this particular recipe, and I’m still working on making some tweaks, but so far, so good!
Check out my dope photography skills.
Coconut Milk Ice Cream Recipe
Ingredients:
- 2 cans of coconut milk
- 2/3 cup maple syrup
- 3 large egg yolks
- 1 cup cocoa powder
- 1 cap of vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp. of sea salt
Directions:
1. In a large sauce pan, bring the coconut milk to a mild boil and whisk in the cocoa powder until it’s incorporated and then remove from the heat.
2. In another bowl, (just a heads up, you’ll be using a lot of bowls for this recipe), and somewhere else on your kitchen counter where you have room, wisk the egg yolks with the maple syrup.
3. Now, SLOWLY add in about 1 cup of the coconut milk/cocoa mixture into the egg yolk/maple syrup mixture while wisking at the same time. It helps to have help, like a little brother in my case. This is important to go slow, because the coconut milk/cocoa mixture is hot and you’ll be adding it to eggs, which means if you go to fast you will end up with scramble eggs. No bueno for ice cream.
4. Then, take the egg/maple syrup/coconut milk/cocoa mixture that you just whisked, and add it back into to the original coconut milk/cocoa mixture…got it? Ok, moving on.
5. You should now have all of the ingredients back into one saucepan. If you don’t, you screwed up somewhere, go back and re-read the directions. From here, slowly mix with a wooden spoon on low until the back of the spoon gets coated with a thick layer, thick enough that you can run your finger through it without having it run.
6. Take this mixture and allow to cool in the fridge for several hours, or for best results, over night.
7. Once it’s cooled, follow the directions on your ice cream maker, pour into pint containers you stole, borrowed, asked politely for from your local ice cream shop.
8. Allow to freeze for a few hours, and voila! Homemade ice cream. Serve with your favorite toppings, and pat yourself on your back for a job well done.
