Easy Vegan Chocolate Ice Cream

Okay, technically it's frozen custard, not ice cream.  But, seriously?  You won't care.

 

I first made this about a week ago, and it came out pretty good, but not great.  So Anthony and I made some more last night, with a few changes. Let me assure you, this batch came out perfectly.

This ice cream is chocolatey, smooth, glossy, velvety, creamy, vegan, and SO good.  It's also a lot cheaper to make it yourself than to buy commercial vegan ice-creams.

Oh sweet jesus, look at that shine.

Ingredients

• 75g (1/3 Cup) of Demerara Sugar
• 400ml Tin of Coconut Milk
• Vanilla Essence
• 60g (1/4 Cup) Cocoa Powder (Bournville is vegan)
• 3 Tablespoons Cornflour/Cornstarch

Student kitchens are fun, aren't they?

1. Melt the sugar in a sauce pan.  Keep stirring (use a spoon) so it doesn't sick.  Be careful with this, and make sure it doesn't burn.
2. Add half the coconut milk.  Be aware that the sugar will solidify again when the coconut milk is added, and may bubble and do other alarming things.  Keep stirring, and it should all mix into a liquid again as the coconut milk heats up.  Once it has, add the cocoa powder, and whisk (or stir, but whisking is easier) until smooth.
3. Mix the cornflour smoothly into the remaining coconut milk, till there are no lumps.  This is your thickener.
4. As the mixture in the pan starts to boil, keep whisking, and slowly pour in the thickener (I whisked while Anthony poured; this made it all much easier).
5. At this point, your mixture should thicken - ours went like mousse (and, honestly, we were tempted to eat it all like that, but we resisted).  Turn off the heat, and stir in some vanilla essence.  
6. Pour your mixture into a tupperware container.  Chill in the fridge for an hour or two, then freeze.  This tends to come out quite thick, so you can eat it at any point, but it will be closest to ice cream after three or four hours in the freezer.

This was delicious.  So gorgeously smooth and creamy, and insanely good.  I really wanted to try it with some of Askey's Chocolate Crunch Crackin' (a chocolate syrup which sets into a solid shell), but we ate it all before we could get some.

A few ideas for changes and additions;

• Leave out the cocoa powder, and make it vanilla (although, if you use demerara sugar, like I did, it also has a nice caramel hint to it).
• Replace the vanilla flavouring with almond essence, and added chopped almonds, and/or amaretto biscuits, and raspberries.
• Add chopped glacé cherries.
• Swirl some toffee sauce/raspberry jam (jelly for Americans)/peanut butter through it.
• Use no cocoa powder or flavouring, and add dessicated coconut instead.
• Make gooseberry ice cream!  (I bet no one ever has before.)
• Add chocolate chips.  Tesco sell dairy-free chocolate buttons.
• Add frozen orange segments, and candied orange peel.

Vanilla and Strawberry?  Banana and Apple?  (Actually, an easier way to do that is to freeze bananas, let thaw a bit, mash them, and add chopped apple/apple sauce).  Maple and Pecan?  Go mad!  Let me know what you come up with.