Okay, I promise my vacation post will be up soon, but while I finish it up, I’m leaving you guys with an ice cream recipe. And it’s not just any ice cream recipe. This one is:
- Dairy-free
- Vegan
- Healthy
- Naturally sweetened
- Flavoured with lavender and blackberry
- No churn
When summer is hot, ice cream is the perfect way to cool yourself down. I really wanted to make something healthier than the normal ones, so I did! We have a bunch of lavender in the garden which dried out due to the heat, so it was perfect for the recipe. There’s also a lot of wild blackberries around our neighbourhood, so my brother and I always go out with a container in hand to pick them all. Well, all that we can take. There’s always this annoying little group of perfectly ripe blackberries just a bit too high and deep in the bush for us to pick.
The cake sitting next to the ice cream in the picture above is what we made for my mom’s birthday, and I’ll be posting that recipe soon. For my mom’s birthday, we made her a 3-course menu, and she had to pick what she wanted to eat. I took most of the inspiration for the dishes from expensive restaurants around us, so that didn’t need a lot of creativity on my part, just a lot of internet searching. Although I tried to convince my mom to pick whatever she wanted, I knew she tried to pick dishes according to the ingredients we already had here at home. Her final choices were the Kohlrabi and Zucchini Fritters I posted last week, Shrimp Risotto with Brussel Sprouts and Feta Cheese, and for dessert Rhubarb Ginger Cake with Lavender Ice Cream (hence this post).
This ice cream is delicious, healthy and dairy free, so go ahead and indulge!
Healthy Coconut Lavender Ice Cream
Dairy-free and healthy lavender ice cream with blackberries. It’s no churn, but just make sure you take out the ice cream 30 minutes earlier to soften before eating.
Adapted from: Lavender Ice Cream for a Picnic in Provence – Mon Petit Four
Ingredients:
1/4 cup coconut milk
3 tsp. dried lavender buds
8 oz. full fat coconut milk
1/4 cup honey or maple syrup
1 cup coconut cream (refrigerate 1 can of coconut milk the night before and scoop out the thick white part for the cream)
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup blackberries, washed and mashed
Instructions:
- Warm the 1/4 cup coconut milk in a saucepan over medium heat until simmering. Lower heat to low and add in the lavender. Let the lavender sit in the milk for 5 minutes over low heat before pouring into a small bowl and covering with plastic wrap. Refrigerate until cool.
- Place a mixer bowl in the fridge or freezer for step 3. In another saucepan, make the coconut condensed milk. Bring the 8 oz. coconut milk to a slight boil. Mix in the honey or maple syrup and let simmer for 25-30 minutes, stirring often. When mixture has thickened slightly and darkened a bit, allow to cool completely.
- While waiting for the coconut condensed milk to cool down, whip the coconut cream into soft peaks in a mixer with the refrigerated/freezed bowl. Add in the vanilla extract and whip until the peaks are stiffer.
- Fold the condensed milk into the whipped coconut cream.
- Strain the lavender milk in a sieve, discarding the lavender buds, and adding the infused milk into the whipped cream + condensed milk mixture. Add in the mashed blackberries and mix until combined. Pour the ice cream batter in a glass or plastic container, covered, and freeze for 4 hours, or until firm.
- When serving, take the ice cream out 30 minutes before so it can soften since it is no churn.
A Kitchen Fable 