Vegan orange and coconut ice cream

It may be the middle of January but we are currently experiencing unseasonable mild weather here in the UK…and I don’t think there is ever a wrong time to eat ice cream, I certainly don’t let winter get in the way of my scoffing gallons of the stuff!!! So last weekend I set out to make vegan ice cream and was pretty pleased with the results. Don’t be put off making this if you don’t have an ice cream maker either because I don’t, a little bit of patience and a food processor produce a rather professional final product!

INGREDIENTS

100g caster sugar

100ml water

The zest and juice from 2-3 large oranges

150ml coconut milk (try and choose a thick creamy variety)

50ml rice milk

1 teaspoon orange blossom water

Put the sugar and water in a saucepan and gently bring to the boil, stirring occasionally until the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Zest two of the oranges and add the zest to the sugar solution. Now juice the oranges measuring the juice produced until you have 300ml. This may only require 2 oranges depending how big and juicy they are so don’t juice the 3rd orange until you know if you require the extra juice. Then add the juice to the sugar solution. 

Leave this solution for a couple of hours to allow the flavours to infuse, if you have time leaving it in the fridge overnight is even better.

After a couple of hours, or the following morning, sieve the orange sugar solution to remove the zest. Add the coconut milk, rice milk and orange blossom water to the mixture. You can replace the rice milk with extra coconut milk if you want, I just added the rice milk to prevent the coconut flavour from becoming too overpowering. Additionally the orange blossom water can be omitted but I find it gives an extra depth to the orangeyness of the ice cream (if orangeyness is a word?!?!).

At this point if you have an ice cream maker bung the mixture into your machine and let it do its magic.

Alternatively put the mixture into a large sealable container so that it forms quite of a shallow layer and stick it into the freezer for a couple of hours until it begins to solidify. At this point transfer the mixture into a food processor and blitz until you have a smooth, creamy consistency. Transfer the mixture back to your freezable container and stick the mixture back into the freezer. Leave again for a few hours and then remove and blitz in the food processor again. Repeat this process again after another couple of hours, blitzing the mixture for a third time, this should break up the ice crystals in the mixture enough to prevent the ice cream turning into one large ice cube, producing an easily scoopable result instead.