Vanilla Bean Coconut Ice Cream

I made this without a machine. I dissolved the sugar on the stove and then blended. After pouring into the freezer container I whipped it with an egg beater and cooled in the fridge before putting in the freezer. I rewhipped every 2 hours or so, breaking up the already frozen sections, making it all uniform. 6 hours later, it was delightful. Only problem was that it was a bit crystalline. But I love it.

This recipe turned out amazing! I used two cans (has to be the tin can kind) of full fat coconut milk, fat and liquid, and monk fruit to sweeten. Blended everything in the blender and added to ice cream machine that had been in the deep freeze for more than 24 hrs. It had a thick, creamy, phenomenal taste and texture! Froze it overnight and still tasted the same the next day. Took it out 30 minutes prior to serving and it thawed and scooped like a gem! Will be making this many times again!

This recipe is fantastic!!! A new staple in our house. I’ve made it three times now and am using it for a dairy free ice cream spread at a baby shower coming up. In my trial runs of this recipe, two batches turned out great and one flopped. I read a lot of the comments and I think I figured out what helps make this recipe work out perfectly:
1. I haven’t tried the blender method, but I heated it on low to allow the sugar to melt in. I let it cool at room temperature for awhile before adding it to the fridge (another commenter recommended this). I think if it is chilled too fast, the coconut oil can seize up.
2. Chilling the mixture made it more successful in my ice cream maker. The batch that flopped, I hadn’t chilled properly in the fridge, so it came out super icy and gritty.
3. I used one can of coconut cream and one can of full fat coconut milk (both from TJs).

Hope this helps others with getting the perfect batch! Now that I’ve figured out what works best with my ice cream maker, I can’t even believe how amazing this recipe is. Thanks so much for sharing!!

Hi! I love so many of your recipes, seriously…hit after hit, currently making your veggie soup with white beans. :) This recipe however, doesn’t seem to come together for me. I’ve now tried several times, honestly forgetting that it didn’t work out before, I tackled this one again. I’ve made countless ice creams in my cuisinart, including vegan options, and this one never seems to solidify. It remains a consistency not much thicker than when it came out of the blender. Open to suggestions!

This did not come together for me at all. I blended all the ingredients together as directed (at room temperature), then poured the mixture into my ice cream maker. It seems like maybe something curdled? Or maybe I over-blended the mixture, even though I did it for less time than suggested? I ended up with what looked like chunky ricotta cheese, just chunks of frozen coconut fat, that got stuck in the middle of the ice cream maker, and frozen paste on the walls. I let the machine go for 20 minutes and tried scraping the contents around several to get things to redistribute and move, but it just kept rotating with an incorporated mass of coconut chunks in the middle.

Sad to waste the ingredients and time. I read after the fact in the comments that others only had this recipe work if they chilled the mixture first. Maybe that’s what went wrong, but I don’t think I’ll be trying this again.

I picked this recipe because I have dear friends who are staying away from dairy, but wanted them to still enjoy dessert at our dinner party. I have made severa batches of homemade ice cream wih my ice cream maker, so I am no stranger to the process. However, this recipe failed to pass the test. I followed the instructions to the letter, apart from the vanilla bean pod, and after an hour and 15 minutes in the ice cream maker the mixture was barely the consistency of a thin milk shake. Don’t get me wrong, it had a fantastic flavor and my friends enjoyed their “shakes” . But it wasn’t the ice cream I’d intended for dessert.

I think this recipe is missing a step compared to a past version. For it to work correctly in the ice cream machine, the mixture needs to be chilled for a few hours before putting it into the ice cream maker!

This recipe came out delicious! I used 1 tbsp vanilla bean paste in place of the scraped vanilla bean, definitely added to the sweet vanilla flavour but still was coconutty enough to enjoy both flavours. The cans of milk I used had a big clump of cream and the rest was just water so I used the cream because surely the water would make it not work. Will try this recipe again because it came out delicious but I will try and use the coconut milk that IS all milk or I will have to use 4 of the same cans that I used to increase the yield. Took about 10/15 minutes in my ice cream machine because the paddle was freaking out lol.

So easy to make and do delicious!
Thanks!

No. No way, I thought. Then I actually made it and wow. It’s actually a bit unreal because I can taste the dairy — that’s how real it tastes.

I used one can of c. cream and one can of c. milk (because that was all I had) and it came out fantastic. Used vanilla powder but everything else was the same. Came out amazing in the cuisinart ice cream maker and now that I know how easy it is to make I’ll always have cans of coconut products on hand, with my bowl in the freezer!

Seriously, thanks. Now on to the waffle recipes!

For me second time was the charm. The first time I attempted to make this ice cream I used coconut milk that was over a year old so the whole can had gone solid. The texture turned out to be terrible (my dislike of the texture was bigger than how much I liked the taste) and it didn’t feel great to throw it away.
This time however I used a can of coconut milk that I had bought less than a month ago. Only a portion of it had gone solid. It was a pleasant surprise as there is no mention in the recipe on what the texture be like with liquid (good) vs solid coconut milk (horrible). I think that’d be good to mention in the recipe.
After freezing it I noticed that scooping it out is harder than what it’d be like to scoop out store-bought vegan ice cream. Tho that’s pretty much nitpicking as this is a 5 ingredient DIY recipe. The texture is still close enough to store-bought so it didn’t hinder the experience. There’s still a certain charm to making ice cream at home and the taste is great! I must admit that the amount of saturated fat in the ice cream makes me a bit uncomfortable though (I know, it’s mostly coconut milk so it’d be silly to expect anything else).
I’m rating this recipe as a solid 4/5. It’s not perfect but that’d be unreasonable to expect. It’s still delicious and I’ll definitely be making more of this some other time too!

I’ve made this recipe for several summers in a row and it’s my all-time favorite home-made ice cream recipe! I’m about to make the first Summer of 2018 batch and I can’t wait!

I made this and it came out perfect. We have a Cuisinart ice cream maker and it took 30 minutes of churning until it quit moving the ice cream. We put it in the freezer and could only wait about 2.5 hours to try it. it was creamy great!!!! The next day, we set it out for 10 minutes and it was perfect again. And then it was gone–going to make it again very soon.
Changes: I didn’t have a vanilla bean and simply increased the vanilla extract a little. I used full-fat coconut milk.

Made this as a first time recipe for an event we were hosting at work.

Not only did it go down well with everyone but somehow it earned me the best dish at the event.

I have guided my work colleagues to this page if they want to make their own.

Thank you so much for a recipe that everyone enjoyed and didn’t even realise it was vegan and lactose free…

This is INCREDIBLE. This was my first ever batch of ice cream in my Cuisinart machine, and it certainly won’t be my last. I put the mixture in the ice cream maker for 43 mins, and the consistency was just like ‘real’ ice cream. Next time I may try adding some key lime juice for a key lime pie ice cream.

This makes good ice cream but you have to be super careful at the whipping stage as many have noted. We used organic coconut cream with no guar gum and even at room temperature had it curdle badly. Pretty substantial waste of vanilla bean, vanilla, and coconut cream. We had better success hand whipping with a whisk so it can’t curdle in a blink on you.

I just finished making this, and it’s in the freezer. I did taste it and it’s very good! Awesome basic iced coconut cream, I will experiment with different flavors next…I’m thinking banana or guava.

This is a fabulous recipe as is. Try adding 30 gms of melted cocoa butter at the end of blending. We also almost halve the sugar and it’s still absolutely delicious.

So the cream of cononut does not work by its self . You need to add coconut milk in order it to freeze.

Just tried the newer recipe (dated June 2017) and it split right when I turned on the food processor. I even used the recommended Trader Joe’s coconut cream! I ended up heating the mixture over the stove to get everything to mix together and chilled in the freezer for about 2 hours. Just took it out of the ice cream maker and it turned out great! Feels a little gritty (could it be the granulated non-organic sugar I used?) but it tastes delicious. Pairing it with a white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookie–I think it’ll be a hit!

This is churning in my Cuisinart ice cream maker as I type this. I’ve used coconut cream and so far this is turning out just fine. It’s about halfway through and I just remembered to add some organic coconut shavings with some organic sugar I had toasted and ground up in the coffee grinder last week. It’s been going for about 25 minutes and it’s not totally creamy right now, but the taste….. the taste is soooo good! I can’t stop myself from dipping a spoon in and testing it.

I used full fat coconut milk and still had a problem with the fat forming little hard fat lumps in the ice cream. It certainly wasn’t as creamy as I was hoping for. Did I do something wrong?

Unfortunately when I blended the ingredients (even without the coconut oil) it split into liquid with a ball of coconut fat in the middle. Had to throw it out. Maybe the salt made this happen? Bummer.

I tried this twice and it worked neither time. Made with coconut milk, it turned it more like a granita crystaline and lumpy with hardened bits of coconut fat. I made it for a birthday and so was very disappointed. I’m not sure you should be posting recipes that are not fully tested and reliable.

I followed your recipe and then doubled it using Simple Truth coconut milk from the carton that had 5 grams of fat per cup/80 cal., turned out delicious! Thank you much!

I am making your recipe right now! The ice cream is currently churning in the machine and I can’t wait to try it! I plan to add peanut butter and mini Justin’s peanut butter cups too :-)

The taste is absolutely delicious (!!!) but like others have commented, my ice cream separated. I’m the only one eating it so it doesn’t matter *that* much to me. My only guess is the 1/4″-1/2″ thick layer of coconut oil at the top of the TJ’s coconut cream. It didn’t really blend well in my vitamix and it just clumped up in my ice cream maker. That said, I’ll definitely try it again, but will either scrape off the oil or use the full fat coconut milk instead.

So I’m made this. I added chopped up dark chocolate covered coconut pieces. Oh muh gawsh.
So so good! I love your recipes.

Made this this morning and it’s delicious! Thanks for the always-great recipes. Tonight I’m making your stuffed peppers. :-)

I love this ice cream! I have tried other ice cream recipes using coconut milk, but it was more like ice milk, wasn’t creamy or delicious like this one. I didn’t have a vanilla bean so I added maple syrup and walnuts and it was wonderful!

I tried TJ’s coconut cream and it would not blend in the blender, switched to stovetop which helped but then coconut oil never mixed in. Had to pitch it including the $6 worth of fresh vanilla bean :(

This recipe did not work out for me at all, even with the blender. My Trader Joe’s coconut cream was separated in the can and never combined in the blender. Once I put it in my ice cream maker it just separated further. It looks and tastes horrible. I tried taking it out and blending it with no luck.

Hi Dana,

I tried this recipe twice yesterday night with high quality organic ingredients but, as others have experienced, the curdling of the mixture during blending kind of spoilt the recipe.. The mixture tasted great but texture didn’t look like ice cream at all. I ended up having to throw it away as I couldn’t bring myself to serve it. I’d suggest putting in a note to let others know to heat the entire mixture after blending (then cool before churning, so that the coconut oil can be incorporated into the mix properly)?

I’m sorry this didn’t work for me, I used a handcrank ice cream maker and it froze solid. You might add this warning to others trying the recipe

Hi! I tried this without the coconut oil, trying to omit some of the fat content, and it seems to have turned out! In my neighborhood, there’s a dairy-free ice cream shop that uses coconut cream in a lot of their recipes and this recipe tastes exactly like theirs, at a fraction of the cost! I’ve tried making my own vegan vanilla so many times but like others have noted in the comment section here, when the mixture is chilling in the fridge a hard layer forms on top. When I put it in the ice cream maker that hardened layer turns into little white chunks that look unappealing. I think the solution is two-fold. One, allow the heated up mixture to become room temperature before chilling it in the fridge. There’s something about going from hot to cold quickly that seems to cause the hardened layer. Two, I think using coconut cream specifically, as opposed to canned coconut milk, even if it’s the full-fat kind, that helps the mixture remain creamy and not harden. One other thing about using full-fat canned coconut milk in my ice cream recipes is that it has been too hard to scoop right out of the freezer, but with the coconut cream, the ice cream can be easily scooped from the freezer. I find canned coconut cream at trader joes. I hope this helps!

Just did it few days ago and result, texture and taste is fantastic and the only reason I will not do it again, is because It give’s me a lot of gastric backward flow, so if you have this problem, this is very bad for it. Pretty sad….

Hi Everyone,

I made this a few months ago and followed the recipe exactly (the blender method). It turned out wonderful. I just made it again today and the mixture separated/curdled in the blender. It don’t think that it is a recipe problem, but is either related to (1) how long/hard it is mixed in the blender or (2) the coconut milk. These are the only two things that I did differently. My hubby was in charge of the blender and mixed this at top speed. One minute it looked great and the next minute it looked like cottage cheese. I also used a different brand of coconut milk. If I figure out the issue. I will let you know.

Beth

I just made this and scooped out a bowl of the finished ice cream to eat right away – it is SO GOOD!!
First off, when I put all the ingredients into my blender, I was so worried to see that the mixture appeared curdled. I just let the blender do it’s thing though and after a few minutes, the mixture came together.
Into the ice cream maker it went – I have a Cuisinart and 30 minutes later, I was snacking on the best ice cream to have come out of my machine.
* I used the 1/4 cup substitution of Agave syrup, plus about 1 Tablespoon.

This was delicious! I had run out of vanilla extract but did have vanilla bean so used Coconut extract instead. I knew it would have a more coconut flavor with a hint of vanilla and was so delicious. unfortunately, I did not have cane sugar so used 1/2 C Agave. I can’t wait to try this recipe again with the vanilla extract and cane sugar and see which I like best :)

I also had the problem with the mixture curdling when I added the coconut oil to the other ingredients, even in the blender, but only with some coconut creams. I imagine that the warm oil hitting the cold mixture created some emulsifying problems. My fix for it was simply to pour the curdled mixture into a pan, heat gently until everything melts and comes to the same temperature (which solves the separation problem) and then cool down the mixture before using.

I made this tonight using dark brown sugar and homemade vanilla extract. I kept a small amount out and made it into a martini with vanilla vodka. I noticed the coconut oil issue but still thought it was good. My son said it was “Pretty much the best ice cream ever.”

I just got an ice cream machine and I’ve never used it before so I tried this recipe but it didn’t work at first because I realized the freezer bowl wasn’t completely frozen solid and my ingredients hadn’t been refrigerated beforehand. So I put the ingredients in the fridge overnight, turned my freezer to the coldest it could go, put the freezer bowl back in, and tried again in the morning. It turned out great! And in my machine only took about 30 minutes. I used 2 cans of Iberia brand coconut milk and since I didn’t have a vanilla bean, I did as another reviewer said, and just added another teaspoon of extract.

like other comments i had a real problem with the coconut oil separating into little pieces, making the finished result very grainy and not like creamy icecream at all, I feel as if the coconut oil was left out and replaced with a thickener, maybe it would create a better result. The thing is coconut oil will always freeze quicker than the coconut cream because its freezing point, so i think that’s what makes it separate in the icecream. I followed the recipe to the tee and still was disapointed:(( however I have always loved all your other recipes Dana and this one just seems to be a dud for me unfortunately.

I made this yesterday. Which means I just ate it now after a night of freezing, and then we were out of the house for the day. We love it! Now to chose what to make next . . .