There are lots of recipes for coconut milk ice-cream, especially with the rise of the “raw” diner (where a dish is not cooked in any way), and the number of vegans (who can’t eat any dairy). My own persuasion of ‘pescetarianism’ is supposed to mean that I don’t eat dairy (because of my osteo-arthritis), but the reality is that I will have the odd cappuccino, the odd ice-cream, and the occasional bit of chocolate. Luckily I’ve was put-off cream for life whilst working for six months in a bakery on Saturdays – there’s nothing like free cream slices for your break to put-you-off forever!
I wanted to create a coconut milk ice-cream recipe, but I wasn’t particularly concerned with excluding dairy, so adapted an existing recipe, replacing part of the double cream with coconut cream. Most of the recipes I’d seen that were dairy-free, didn’t seem as smooth as I wanted, often scooping unevenly, so at least this recipe gives you a velvety smooth finish without impacting on the flavour. I was also making it for a specific dish, so included lots of grated lime zest into the recipe too.
400ml whole milk
A squirt of Coconut Arome (into the cooled base)
Method:
- The joy of a Thermomix recipe is that you can tip the whole thing in, and walk away. First I thinly peeled two limes, and pulsed the zest with the sugar.
- Put the remaining ingredients in the Thermomix bowl and set to 80ºC, speed 5, for around 11 minutes (or until the bases reaches temperature). Do make sure the custard reaches 80ºC, as this is the pasteurisation point.
- Strain it, preferably into a bowl over ice, and chill in the fridge.
- When cool, churn in your ice-cream machine until the consistency is right, then set in the freezer.
Notes:
- It’s important to strain the ice-cream base, as the zest will have discoloured in the high temperature. The third lime should be zested into the cold base, to preserve its fresh brilliance.
- I think I prefer the texture of the base to that of cream, but to be fair, I do love coconut! The texture was particularly creamy without having the buttery overload you get from double cream – you could take down the sugar quantity, if you wanted a sharper, more sorbet like flavour.
- Don’t forget, homemade ice-cream really does have a short shelf life, eat it soon!
- To improve the mouth feel of your ice-cream, you can add stabilisers, which delay the formation of ice crystals. If you make industrial quantities of ice-cream, Oakleaf European can sell you 1kg bags of stabiliser, or Sous Chef can sell you smaller quantities – both use Louis Francis Stab 2000.
This is my version of Macus’s Pain Perdu, Pineapple and Coconut