Here's my latest favorite dairy-free vanilla ice cream. It's super creamy, uses four ingredients, and if you'd like you can add vanilla powder to it as well so your ice cream is dotted throughout with vanilla seeds. It hardly lasts more than 24 hours in my freezer. Because of this and other ice cream recipes, I keep cans of coconut cream in my kitchen pantry. I often use paper ice cream containers to store the ice cream in the freezer for an authentic ice cream takeout experience.
Cashews are commonly used in place of dairy, however you have options. You can replace the cashews with sunflower seeds, or macadamia nuts (see Christina's comment below).
The trick to getting this ice cream extra creamy is to blend the ingredients at room temperature in a high speed blender, which helps the fats emulsify well (mix together easily). I also recommend you use an ice cream maker. If you don't have an ice cream maker check the recipe notes for alternatives. I have a Kitchen Aid Mixer ice cream maker attachment but any ice cream maker will work.
Karen Gebhart says
Hi Erica, I’d like to try this recipe and my daughter is allergic to cashews. I don’t have sunflower seeds on hand, I do have pumpkin seeds. Do you think I could try that as an alternative? Thank you.
Hi Karen. I don't think pumpkin will work well. Macadamia is another option.
melissa gant says
can you substitute sugar for the liquid sweeteners 1:1 here?
Erica says
Hi Melissa, I don't know for sure. My guess is you can by adding an additional 1/4 to 1/2 cup more coconut milk to the recipe to fill the missing volume from the liquid sweetener. Let me know if you try it!
Christina says
I substituted macadamia nuts since cashews don’t agree with me and used lavender honey. It was delicious! Thank you for the recipe.
Erica says
Thanks, Christina! That sounds divine, I must try that 🙂