Vegan Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream (recipe)
This recipe for vegan mint chocolate chip ice cream (Full of Plants) will send you back to childhood, remembering this wonderful flavoured summer dessert. Unlike most vegan ice-cream recipes, this one does not use soaked cashews.
Instead it combines plant milk with real peppermint oil (and chocolate chips) to create a creamy consistency, and is also easier to digest. It’s also way cheaper than store-bought! Vegan chocolate chips are easy to find, but the recipe does use unusual dextrose (a sweetener). There’s a simple recipe below.
Keep mint and chocolate away from animal friends. Before cooking, read up on food safety for people and pets.
For tinned ingredients, remove/pop lids inside, or pop ring-pulls over holes (pinch top closed) before recycling, to avoid wildlife getting trapped.
Prefer a simpler recipe?
This vegan choc chip ice cream (Rainbow Nourishments) is much simpler to make, the only ‘difficult to find’ ingredient being vegan condensed milk, but you can now find this in most stores (Nature’s Charm and Biona are the main brands, though even Carnation now offers a version).
You will need an ice-cream maker for this recipe. But if you make a lot of homemade ice-cream, it’s worth it. Just mix your ingredients, pour into a chilled bowl and you can whizz up recipes to your heart’s content!
Why choose dairy-free ice cream?
Most dairy ice-cream is not made from milk from free-range organic farms, most comes from factory farms, where cows and their calves face rough conditions. Also many male calves are killed soon after birth (or separated from their mothers) as they have no financial value to the dairy industry.
Plant-based ice cream is free from cholesterol (and lactose) and easy to digest. As long as you’re not allergic, ‘good fats like nuts’ offer protein and calcium.
You can buy ice-cream in supermarkets, but it’s usually not made to the same quality as home-made or artisan brands. Many just use a lot of water and coconut oil, with a few cheap flavourings.
