Fast Vegan Ice Cream. Summer Is Coming!

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Fast Vegan Ice Cream. Summer Is Coming!

Summer is coming. Growing up in San Francisco's Sunset District, those words had a bit of a different image for me than for most people.

Try watching fireworks in that.

Of course when I moved to Los Angeles, I lived in Santa Monica blocks from the beach, so my summers stayed pretty much the same.

So you'd think spending summers in cities not known for blazing Summer weather would dull the appetite for ice cream. Not so. One of my fondest memories is taking an after dinner walk on chilly summer nights with my parents to Polly Ann Ice Cream on Noriega street about a 1/2 mile from our house. There wearing coats and jackets, sometimes a hat (I had delicate ears), the whole family would belly up to the bar and order ice cream cones.

So did moving to a real, genuinely hot Summer town like Sonoma dim my enthusiasm for ice cream? Not hardly. Whipping up ice cream for family parties and friends gatherings is one of my favorite things to do. But not everyone can enjoy ice cream, even if they want to. My friend Anne is lactose intolerant, my friend Terri is gluten free and just found out she's also allergic to eggs (except not duck eggs, sorry Daffy) and had to cut out dairy. This started me on a search for ice cream that my ice cream loving friends who have had to "break up" with ice cream could enjoy.

Let me say, there are a whole lot of vegan ice cream recipes out there. I'm not kidding. It's nuts out there. I found out that a whole lot of those recipes involved a very pricy blender device that seems to be all the rage right now and which I am too much a of a tightwad to buy. I finally settled on a very simple one that I'd found on many sites. And you know what they say, a million vegans can't be wrong. So, if you just want to make some vegan ice cream with a simple ice cream machine and a cheap ass 20 buck blender, this is your recipe.

Chocolate Almond Milk Vegan Ice Cream

Here's What You Need:

• 2 Tbs of sugar
• 2 Tbs of unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 and 1/2 cup of unsweetened almond milk
• 2 ripe bananas

Here's What To Do:

Mix 1/2 cup of almond milk together with the sugar and cocoa powder.

Pop it into the microwave for 30 seconds, then take it out and give it a good stir blending it together well.

Peel the bananas.

Break them up and put them into a blender along with the cocoa sugar mixture, and 1 cup of almond milk.

Blend it until it's smooth.

Pour the mixture into any ice cream machine and let it blend for about 25 minutes or until it's the desired thickness.

Serve it up.

The ice cream has a nice deep chocolate banana flavor and really can do the trick for someone who wants their ice cream but either doesn't want, or can't have all the fat, and dairy. This makes about 4 guilt free servings.

But be warned, this ice cream is best made and served directly. When stored in the freezer before serving it turns to icy stone. Truly. I found that out the hard way last Saturday night when I tried to serve it to friends. Good thing I had a back up dessert. This ice cream makes up so fast you can really just churn and burn and don't worry about left overs. There probably won't be any.

Coming up next, a book review and what's on for Mothers Day? Follow along on Twitter @kathygori