Dairy Free Ice Cream: The Basics

Dairy free ice cream is just what it sounds like: ice cream that contains no dairy from cows or any other animal. Instead, a dairy free ice cream recipe might include: coconut milk, almond milk, cashew milk, soy milk, or even rice milk as a substitute.

People eat dairy free ice cream for a number of reasons. From veganism to dairy allergies to lactose intolerance, many people follow a dairy-free diet. If you’re celiac/coeliac, then there’s the chance that you might also be dairy free. Whether your digestive system is a little sensitive because of your celiac disease or you’ve developed a dairy sensitivity along with your gluten issues (which we’ve talked about before), then you might be avoiding dairy altogether.

We’ve found that dairy free ice cream is pretty easy to come by nowadays at most grocery stores, not including already dairy-free frozen desserts like sorbet or juice-based popsicles. This is great because dairy is a very common allergen and it makes finding desserts that everyone can eat much easier.

Why Make it Yourself?

While dairy free ice cream is definitely not hard to come by nowadays, there are some drawbacks to buying it in stores. For one, if you are gluten free or have other food allergies or food sensitivities, then you might be limited in your options. For example, if you’ve got a chocolate sensitivity like Isabelle then you’ll find that most flavors of dairy free ice cream contain chocolate to some extent.

You might also find that there are only so many flavor choices. We’ve noticed that some stores might have lots of options while others have maybe only a couple of choices (they don’t even have vanilla sometimes). The selection might also change week to week.

The other major factor to consider is cost. Dairy free ice cream can be very, very expensive. Just to buy a small pint of ice cream can run you anywhere between $6-$10, and sales might only bring you down to $5. That might not sound that bad, but when you can find dairy ice cream for that price for an entire quart (and you kind of love ice cream) that cost will add up fast. Even if you buy an ice cream maker, the cost of that plus ingredients will even out fast if you make ice cream as often as we do.

The other bonus of our dairy free ice cream recipe is that it is vegan. Not only is this more inclusive, but it’s much easier than dealing with tempering eggs to make a custard. The coconut milk thickens well with just a little gluten free flour or starch, so it really makes the whole process easier.

Choosing a Dairy Free Ice Cream Recipe

Choosing Your Ingredients

As we mentioned, there are a number of dairy substitutes that can be used in a dairy free ice cream recipe. That being said, we’ve found that coconut milk—specifically canned, condensed coconut milk—provides the best consistency for ice cream. Not only is this an easy ingredient to work with, but it really tastes like dairy ice cream.

We suggest a full-fat (i.e. not a “light”) coconut milk, as thinner varieties won’t work as well. We’ve made our strawberry ice cream with more watery coconut milk before, and it came out quite solid and popsicle-like. Sweetened or unsweetened is fine, you just need to adjust how much sugar you add accordingly.

As for other ingredients, you can add basically anything you’d like. We like the strawberry ice cream we make a lot (which is why we included the recipe in this post), but we’ve made carob-chip cookies and cream, mint chip, and vanilla.

Having the Right Equipment & Storage

The other crucial part to making your own dairy free ice cream is having an ice cream maker. While you can technically do this the old-fashioned way and make it manually, this just makes it a whole lot easier and faster. Yes, buying the machine upfront is a cost, but if you’re consistently eating dairy-free ice cream then it’ll pay for itself in no time. It also makes it really hard to justify buying that tiny $7 pint of ice cream.

What also really helps is having the right ice cream containers. We used to use whatever big plastic container we had, but this took up way more space than it needed to. A family member saw this and immediately bought these containers for us and it’s made a world of difference.

Strawberry & Coconut Milk Dairy Free Ice Cream Recipe

Ingredients

2 cans of unsweetened condensed coconut milk (full fat)
16 oz strawberries sliced (1 container)
1 tsp vanilla
1 lemon
1 – 1 1/2 cups sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. gluten free flour or starch (we use rice flour)

Directions

Make sure that your ice cream maker bowl is frozen solid (a few hours or overnight).
Rinse and drain your strawberries. Cut them into 1/4″ slices, and then cut those slices in half.
Put the sliced strawberries in a bowl and squeeze the juice of one lemon over. Add around 2 tbsp. sugar and stir through. Set aside for now.
In a medium to large pot, add the 2 cans of coconut milk and stir together over medium heat.
Add the starch or flour to this mix and whisk it in. You don’t want any lumps at this point.
Add the vanilla and the sugar. Start with less sugar and adapt as needed. Add the salt to balance the flavor.
Bring this ice cream base to a nice simmer and add your strawberries. You want to make sure that there are pieces of strawberries, but also that all the juices from the bowl are in the ice cream.
Keep stirring this mixture through until it thickens. This can take between 5-10 minutes.
Remove the pot from the heat, cover it, and set it aside to cool for 1-2 hours.
When the ice cream base is at room temperature, pour it into your ice cream maker and churn for 25-30 minutes. Check the ice cream around 20-25 minutes in to make sure it’s getting thicker. It should look like soft serve or slightly melted ice cream.
When the ice cream is done churning, immediately put it in your ice cream container and freeze it for 4 hours.
After 4 hours, your ice cream should be ready to eat. Leave it out for a few minutes before serving to soften.