Dairy-free ice cream is easy to make and delicious
Bananas, avocados and coconut milk provide good bases
To be lactose-intolerant in the summertime used to mean skipping the dessert highlight of the season: ice cream. Thanks to inventive chefs, however, dairy-free ice cream recipes have proliferated in recent years. Now everyone can come to the ice cream social as long as it includes a tub full of one of these alternatives.
The easiest ways to satisfy a dairy-free ice cream craving is by pureeing frozen bananas. You can purée the bananas alone, or add a spoonful of cocoa powder, peanut butter, or Nutella to flavor the mixture. The ice cream will be ready to eat as is, but can be enhanced by a variety of mix-ins, including nuts, toasted coconut, chocolate chips and cooked sweetened berries.
Mexican food expert Rick Bayless has a recipe for avocado ice cream that is almost as simple, and a great end to a spicy barbecue. Just purée avocados, water, sugar, lime juice and tequila in a food processor and freeze in an ice-cream maker. The tequila prevents the ice cream from forming ice crystals, keeping it smooth.
Another option is ice cream made with raw cashew nuts. The basic recipe involves soaking the nuts overnight to plump them up, and then pureeing them with either soy milk or almond milk and a liquid sweetener such as honey or corn syrup. Because raw cashews have a neutral flavor, cashew-based ice cream can be flavored any way you like. Add cocoa powder, espresso powder, sweetened cooked strawberries, mint extract and chocolate chips, rum extract and raisins plumped up with rum. Or use maple syrup as your sweetener and add maple extract and chopped toasted walnuts.
My favorite dairy-free ice cream is made with coconut milk. Not only do I like the flavor of coconut, but I love the creamy consistency that you get with the full-fat version (avoid light coconut milk, which will produce a less lavish, more icy product). When you open a can of coconut milk, you will immediately notice the strict separation of the fat from the liquid. To prevent this separation from occurring in your ice cream, blend the mixture to emulsify before freezing it. A little bit of cornstarch further improves and stabilizes the texture. The alcohol in the vanilla blocks ice crystals from forming.
Making ice cream takes just a few minutes of hands-on work, but does require some planning. I use an inexpensive electric icecream machine with an insert that must sit in the freezer for at least 6 hours before it is ready to churn ice cream. But even if you have a more expensive model that has a built-in compressor, you must still give your ice cream base time to chill for 4 hours in the refrigerator before use. In addition, it will need a couple of hours for it to firm up in the freezer after churning.