#10 Vegan Coconut Soy

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes a coconut?

That's the flavor of this week's ice cream!

It's also my first VEGAN ice cream. This ice cream was created per the request of Kip over at Bierkast. He needed a dairy-free dessert for a co-worker's birthday party. They served it with banana splits!

Making this coconut ice cream was an interesting experience. This is the first time I've made something without any cream or milk. Here's the basic recipe: 4 cups unsweetened coconut milk, 2 cups unsweetened vanilla soy milk, 1 cup sugar, 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract, and shredded coconut flakes.

(Yes, I am going to be calling this an ice cream even though there's no cream or milk. It is more along the lines of a sorbet or shaved iced.)

I tasted both the coconut milk and soy milk after I opened the cartons. They didn't taste like anything, so I added the sugar, but then it just tasted like sweet water, which is a very lackluster taste for an ice cream. Next I added some vanilla extract, but still it was missing that coconut flavor. Luckily I had bought a bag of sweetened shredded coconut flakes for the mix in, so I decided to process them in the mini-food processor until they were finely chopped. Then I put the coconut/soy milk mixture on the stove and steeped the chopped coconut flakes in the mixture for a while. That did the trick. The mixture successfully extracted the coconut flavor! I let the mixture chill for about an hour in the refrigerator and then strained it into the ice cream machine. It began to churn... and churn... and churn... yet the mixture would not freeze! Something was wrong. What could it have been? Was the mixture not cold enough to begin with? Is it me? Is it my ice cream machine? I still don't know! After about 40-45 minutes the mixture was a slushy soup, so I added the rest of the shredded coconut flakes as a mix-in, and poured it into a two quart storage container. Then I added a layer of shredded coconut on top, which looked like Parmesan cheese, and put it in the freezer so that it would, finally, freeze.

Despite the technical mishap it was still delicious. Kip brought back the left overs after his office party so I eventually had the opportunity to taste this one as I had forgotten to set aside some of it for myself!

I read on the web that coconut milk freezes very hard. Well, it's true. This ice cream needs to thaw for at least 20 minutes before it becomes scoopable. The consistency and texture is very much like that of shaved ice. Kip said it reminded him of old fashioned ice cream that you make with a hand churn. The coconut flavor is pronounced and tasty... with the proper additional ingredients this ice cream could be the base of a fantastic pina colada-like treat!

See, coconut flakes look like Parmesan cheese!

Maybe one day it will really be Parmesan cheese...