A sweet summer surprise!

One tasty dessert that can often be missed when you aren't able to eat dairy products is ice cream.  There are some great products out there (coconut based is what we have always preferred) that you can just purchase and require no at home work.  This is what we have purchased for the majority of the past 2 years whenever I had an ice cream craving.  About a year ago I purchased an ice cream machine in the hopes to start making my own (when you make your own there are less ingredients and you have control over exactly what you are eating).  However after a few failed attempts I put the machine away and only recently took it back out.  We had been to a strawberry farm in July and picked/froze 18 pounds of strawberries with one of my hopes being that I could make strawberry ice cream with them (one flavor I haven't found in the store made coconut brands).  I thought the ice cream was amazing and my husband (who can still have regular ice cream) even gave it an 8.5/10!  Now that I have figured out the basics of ice cream making with coconut milk, I am excited to start trying other flavors and tweaking recipes to my liking.  Here is the recipe we used:

1.5 cups frozen strawberries

3 cups full fat coconut milk

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract

.5 cup agave

Pinch of sea salt

1) Begin by whisking the cornstarch into 1/2 cup of the coconut milk ensuring there are no clumps.  Don't forget to give the cans of coconut milk a good shake before opening to mix it up real well. 

2) Heat the rest of the coconut milk in a medium sauce pan until it just starts to form bubbles.  At this point you will add your agave, vanilla and sea salt while continuing to heat the mixture.  Next, slowly stir in the cornstarch mixture.  Continue to heat the mixture while stirring frequently (make sure not to boil the mixture) until the texture reaches what I have read others call a custard texture but to me looked like a runny pudding texture.  This mixture will now need to be chilled over night.  This is a good time to put the ice cream maker's freezer bowl into the freezer (our ice cream maker recommends freezing for 24 hours).

3). The next day start by putting your frozen strawberries (fresh is fine too, we just have a lot of frozen) into your food processor until smooth.

4) Pour your strawberries and coconut mixture into the ice cream maker and mix together using a spatula.  Follows the manufacturer's directions.  Ours took about 25 minutes and reached texture that was similar to soft serve ice cream.  You can eat right away or freeze in a separate sealed container for later (I thought the texture was best right away:-). Enjoy!