There’s a popular ice cream shop in our neighborhood that makes exquisite dairy ice cream but their vegan ice cream shouldn’t exist. The flavors are fine but the texture, the poor texture, is so flat. Sorbet has more character than that pea protein-made ice cream. No wonder it’s not creamy and rich. I emailed them to offer my recipe developing services but they didn’t reply, yet. The other place, Salt and Straw, makes a luxurious vegan ice cream but it can burn a dragon’s throat with its sweetness. It’s like you’re paying to get diabetes!
I had no intention to buy an ice cream maker but when you stumble upon a used though never-been-used Cuisinart machine at Goodwill, that costs as much as two scoops here in LA, you buy it. The pedal part was missing but Amazon sells new ones for 10 bucks. (I paid $20 in total!)
I didn’t use it for a year because I thought the churning takes forever but surprisingly, it took only 20 minutes. (If you don’t have an ice cream machine, you can make this recipe the way I make my no-machine banana ice cream.
Last week I developed two coconut milk-based flavors: this fig ice cream – August is when the figs get chubby and ripe – and apple cinnamon ice cream. I roasted sour apples with cinnamon and maple in the oven. You can either cook or roast the fruits before mixing them with the coconut milk. You don’t want to make it with raw fruits. It would brown.
Every spoonful of this ice cream was thick, creamy and perfectly sweetened – the way vegan ice cream should be. Maybe I’ll drop off a pint at that shop, or open my own place, or just keep my day job and continue to make vegan ice cream at home.
Easy Plant-based Fig Ice Cream
Equipment
- Blender
- Ice cream maker optional
- Pint-size container
Ingredients
- 8 oz. 200g black or green figs, about 8 medium figs
- ¼ cup coconut sugar
- 1 tablespoon Vanilla extract
- 2 cups coconut milk
Instructions
- Cut the stems of the figs and slice them in half lengthwise. Put in a small saucepan with coconut sugar, vanilla extract, and 1⁄4 cup water. Cook on medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring often, until figs are tender. Let it cool for 10 minutes.
- Put in a blender with 2 cups of coconut milk and blend until smooth (if you like chunks in your ice cream, blend until 80 percent is smooth).
- Prepare your ice cream machine and turn it on. Pour the mixture slowly in it and churn until it’s ice cream. Transfer to a container and store in the freezer. Daah, where else would you store an ice cream?!?
