Cashew Dark Chocolate Ice Cream (Dairy-Free, Refined Sugar-Free)

Ah, ice cream. It is delicious, easy to serve and can be a great treat, whatever the season. When you decide for whatever reason that you need to avoid consuming dairy, you wonder if you'll be able to eat ice cream again. The good news is that you usually have a lot of options at the grocery store for dairy-free frozen treats. The bad news is that a lot of them suck. Oh, you can stuff yourself full of ice cream made from soy... Except you can't. If you need to avoid dairy, you probably need to avoid soy as well. That soy is also almost certainly GMO. And that doesn't even address the elephant in the room, which is that it tastes horrible. So, you think, I'll just buy some ice "cream" based on coconut milk or almond milk. Until you spot the carageenan as an ingredient. And don't even look at the price tag.

If you want to bypass all that aggravation, you can eat ice cream made with cashew milk. Cashew milk and coconut milk are similar in price to make. But where products made with coconut milk will always taste at least vaguely of coconut, cashews provide a more blank canvas to add other flavors. Years ago, I tried some insanely-expensive chocolate ice cream ($8/cup) made with cashew milk. It was delicious, and inspired me recently to convert this original recipe of mine to dairy-free. You will be pleased to discover it won't break the bank for you, either.

Now here's the thing about making your own ice cream: you need to get the fat content right. Any fool with an ice cream maker can tell you how easy it is to just throw any kind of milk and sweetener into the ice cream bowl and freeze it. In practice, it is not that simple. Ice cream requires fat. That's why it's called ice "cream" and not ice "milk." Sure, you can buy low-fat and even fat-free ice cream at the grocery store. But they use carageenan as a stabilizer, and they have equipment that almost certainly works better than yours. You need fat to make it work. In my experience, the best ice cream comes out when you make the custard using half and half and add heavy whipping cream to it. We aren't using dairy today, but we will work to get the fat content to about the same for both. Let's start with the cashew milk.

Start with a bowl of cashews. You'll need one cup of cashews for about every three cups of milk you need. For regular cashew milk, you'd add four cups of water. Today you will only add two, since you need to make this extra thick to get the fat content right. Soak the cashews overnight, covered, in the fridge. The next day, strain them, rinse them and pour them in the blender.

Blend the heck out of those cashews. Then add about a half-cup of water and blend again. Then add the other 1.5 cups and blend again on high for a couple of minutes. You can strain it with a fine strainer, but I maybe had a half-teaspoon of excess after straining. If you don't mind the occasional tiny piece of cashew in it, I don't think you need to. I ended up with three cups. I reserved one for the custard, one for adding to the mixture later and one to use for something else at another time.

Let's talk about fat content now. Regular half and half has 24 grams of fat in one cup. This double-thick cashew milk has somewhere between 18-26 grams. It's not exact but it worked perfectly well. Heavy whipping cream has 40-48 grams of fat in it. The original recipe called for one cup of heavy cream to be added shortly before freezing. For the second cup of cashew milk mentioned above, I recommend adding 1-2T of extra-virgin coconut oil and blending it together, to boost the fat content. Once you've done that, put that milk covered in the fridge to cool. Let's make the custard now.

Let's start with the chocolate mixture. This is 6T cocoa powder and 6T pure maple syrup (don't you dare use Mrs. Butterworth's), in a four-cup bowl or larger. If you ever decide to increase the recipe, just remember that these two ingredients increase at a 1:1 ratio. Once you've got it mixed together somewhat like frosting, mix in your three egg yolks. Set that aside.

Pour the first cup of cashew milk into a small saucepan. Turn on the heat to medium-high. You want to get the temperature to about 180 degrees. It will not take long at all.

Once it has hit 170-180degF, turn the heat down to medium-low. Take one ladle-full of the cashew milk and pour it slowly into the chocolate mixture bowl, whisking continuously. This allows the temperature of the egg yolks to rise slowly enough that they do not harden (like scrambled eggs, which would be a horrible texture for this). Once you have mixed it thoroughly in the bowl, slowly scrape the contents of the bowl into the saucepan, whisking continuously. Return the heat to medium-high and whisk continuously until the custard begins bubbling. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Once the custard has cooled, I like to pour it back into the bowl I was using to make the chocolate mixture. But since it had raw eggs in it, I usually wash it first. Cover the custard and put it in the fridge to cool. Once both the custard and the cashew milk/coconut oil mixture have reached a temperature below 40degF, whisk them together and return them to the fridge until you are ready to make the ice cream (which you should do within an hour of this last task).

It's pretty easy from here. Scrape the ice cream mixture into the freezing bowl, and turn on the ice cream maker.

When I made this, it took almost no time to freeze. It was surprisingly quick, around 10-15 minutes. If you double the recipe, it may take a little longer. It's hard to wait around while the custard cools in the fridge, but you're better off if you give it that time to get down to 35 or even 30 degrees. It freezes that much easier.

It's done! And it is so tasty. We couldn't tell that it didn't have dairy in it, because the fat gave it such a smooth texture. This recipe makes about 3-3.5 cups of ice cream, so you may want to double it if you want more leftovers.

Cashew Milk Chocolate Ice Cream
Cashew Milk
1 cup raw cashew pieces
2 cups water
Soak cashews covered overnight in the fridge. Rinse and strain. Blend in blender with water until completely smooth. Divide into three one-cup portions.

Cashew "Whipping Cream"
Return one cup of the cashew milk to blender with 1-2T of extra-virgin coconut oil. Blend until completely incorporated. Cool covered in the fridge.

Chocolate Custard
6T maple syrup
6T cocoa powder
3 egg yolks
Whisk ingredients together in four-cup or larger bowl. Put one cup of cashew milk into small saucepan, on medium-high heat. When temperature reaches 180degF, turn heat to medium-low. Pour one ladle-full into chocolate mixture, whisking continuously. Scrape contents of bowl into saucepan, whisking continuously. Return heat to medium-high until custard begins bubbling. Cool, cover and refrigerate until <40degF. Whisk together with cashew milk/coconut oil mixture and return to refrigerator. Pour ice cream mixture into ice cream maker and freeze according to instructions.

Makes 3-3.5 cups ice cream.