4 Awesome + Easy Dairy-Free Ice Cream Recipes (No ice cream maker needed!)

If you’ve been missing ice cream and frozen yogurt now that it’s summer and the season for those cool, sweet treats, I have a surprise for you…

You can make ice cream or sorbet without the dairy (consumption of dairy and acne are actually found to be correlated) and added sugar…or fancy, expensive ice-cream maker! These great recipes are perfect for the occasional summertime treat.

There are a few ways you can make them, the first of which is ridiculously quick and easy:

Banana Fro Yo

Peel a banana. Slice it up. Freeze it. Put it in the food processor or Vitamix and let it run until it fluffs up and looks creamy. Scoop it into a bowl and enjoy! You can add in vanilla extract, cacao, mint (good with cacao!), frozen strawberries, or anything else you’d like to create your favorite flavor of ice cream.

When whipped, it becomes the texture and feel of frozen yogurt. It’s actually kind of shocking.

The next one has more fat than the banana one, but it’s creamy and delicious:

Creamy Coconut Milk Ice Cream

Ingredients:

• 13 oz. of full-fat coconut milk, refrigerated
• 1-2 frozen bananas (I like to peel them and cut them into pieces—at least in half—before freezing them)
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• Extra sweetener (raw honey or maple syrup), if desired
• Flavorings to taste, like cacao powder or nibs, nuts, berries, more coconut, extracts, etc. You can add a pinch of high-quality sea salt to bring out the sweet flavor, though it’s not necessary.

Mix the coconut milk, bananas, sweetener, vanilla, and fruit or extracts in the blender. Do a taste test to see if you need to add anything before you put it in the freezer or ice cream maker.

Chill the mixture in the refrigerator and then run it through your ice cream maker, if you have one. At the end, you can mix in the dry ingredients (cacao nibs, nuts, etc). Put the ice cream in an airtight container and store it in the freezer.

If you don’t have an ice cream maker, you don’t even have to go out and buy one! The texture won’t be exactly the same (a little slushier, less creamy), but you can pour your mixture into a freezer-safe container and then whisk it every 30 to 60 minutes so it doesn’t turn into one big frozen block, until it’s ready (about three hours). This is what I do, because I do not own an ice cream maker.

Here are some combinations to try:

• Strawberries (fresh or frozen) and fresh basil
• Almond butter and cacao
• Coconut and almonds
• Cacao nibs and mint leaves (add some spirulina for color!)
• A mix of your favorite berries
• Coconut and a splash of lime juice

You could also just keep it simple and choose one fruit, like peaches or cherries, and add another splash of vanilla. Don’t mix all these combos together at the same time of course— pick on option and stick with it. Keep it simple, always!

Hempseed Ice Cream

If you’re not a big fan of coconut, you can make something similar by mixing ½ cup of hemp seeds with two cups of water in the blender (add the water slowly and stop when the mixture becomes creamy), then using that in place of the coconut milk in the recipe above.

Fruit Sorbet

I have one more amazing summer dessert option for you—sorbet.

You’ll need:

• 2-3 cups of fruit
• Half cup of liquid, your choice, for flavor (or water for extra moisture if you just want to keep it simple)
• Your choice of sweetener, like raw honey or maple syrup (optional)

Choose your favorite fruit, chop it up (you need about three cups), and put it in the freezer for a couple of hours. Freezing the fruit beforehand isn’t necessary, but it speeds the process up so you can dig in a little sooner. If you don’t think your blender can handle that much frozen fruit, don’t freeze it first.

Once you’re ready, take the fruit out and put it into the blender or food processor with half a cup of liquid (water, lemon juice, coconut milk, etc) and some raw honey or some maple syrup.

Another option is to dump the ingredients into a big bowl and use a hand blender to whip it up to the right texture (this is so fast and so easy, and you can eat it right out of the bowl when you’re done!).

Depending on the type of fruit you use, you may need to add extra water, but only add a couple of tablespoons at a time as you go, and watch the texture. It’s always easier to add more than to fix it if you put too much in.

You can stop the blender once it gets to the sorbet texture and eat it immediately, but if you accidentally let it go too long and it gets too runny (or if you didn’t start with frozen fruit), all you have to do is put it into a freezer-safe container and whisk it every 30 minutes or so until it’s ready.

If you want a smoother texture, you can strain the liquid mixture, then pour it into a container that’s already cold (freeze a baking dish, for example). Pop the mixture into the freezer and then, as before, stir it or whisk it about every 30 minutes until it’s ready.

Get creative and post what kind of ice cream or sorbet you made here! I can’t wait to see what you come up with. For instance, you can learn how is almond milk made and substitute it into any of the recipes.

Enjoying some strawberry vanilla bean sorbet with Lil Bub.

Don’t forget to save your favorite non-dairy recipes on your Pinterest board.

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