This vegan ice cream recipe is truly the best! It is creamy and smooth and has the perfect ice cream texture. You will definitely not miss the dairy in this delicious dessert!
I have been making vegan ice cream for years and I truly think this is the most divine recipe.
Our goal was to create a texture that is pretty much identical to regular dairy-based ice cream. And we’ve done it!
It’s everything you want an ice cream to be, perfectly textured and perfectly sweet, ultra creamy and smooth and melts in your mouth.
The secret? We use a mix of homemade cashew cream and coconut milk to create the neutral creamy base that very closely matches a dairy cream base in terms of flavor. And to that we add cacao butter and coconut oil which creates the perfect texture.
If you love making vegan ice cream then you’ll also love our cashew ice cream and our vegan banana ice cream.
Serve it topped with vegan chocolate sauce or vegan caramel sauce or with add-ins like vegan cookie dough or vegan brownie pieces.
Ingredients You’ll Need For This Ice Cream:
Ingredient Notes
- Coconut milk – should be canned, full fat coconut milk.
- Cacao butter – cannot be mistaken for cocoa butter or coconut butter or any other ingredient that may sound similar. It HAS to be cacao butter. It looks like white chocolate and comes in hard uneven pieces. We chop it up and melt it down for this recipe. There isn’t a substitute, but if you don’t wish to use it, you can omit it from this recipe. However, it will result in a texture that isn’t quite as good.
- Coconut oil – you can use regular virgin coconut oil or switch it for refined coconut oil where the coconut flavor has been removed.
- Raw cashews – are soaked in hot water for an hour and then blended up with water to make a thick and ultra creamy cashew cream. This, together with the coconut milk creates the neutral creamy base for this ice cream.
How To Make Vegan Ice Cream
You will find full instructions and measurements in the recipe card at the bottom of the post. This is a summary of the process to go along with the process photos.
- You start with making homemade cashew milk. It has to be homemade cashew milk because it’s creamy to the extreme and there is no store-bought option that will be this creamy. It’s really more like cashew cream than cashew milk.
- To make it, soak some cashews in hot water for an hour. Put your cashews in a bowl and pour boiling water from the kettle over the top. Leave them to soak for one hour. Then drain them and add them to your blender jug along with some water and blend up into a very thick and creamy cashew milk.
- Add the cashew milk to a mixing bowl along with full fat canned coconut milk and mix them together.
- Add white granulated sugar and water to a saucepan and heat, stirring constantly until the sugar is melted.
- Add chopped cacao butter, coconut oil and salt to the melted sugar and mix in until it’s all melted together.
- Pour this out into the bowl with the cashew milk and coconut milk mix, add vanilla extract and then use an immersion blender to get it all blended together.
- Place the bowl into the freezer for 15 minutes to get the mix nice and chilled, and then churn it in your ice cream machine until it reaches soft serve consistency.
- Transfer the ice cream to a loaf pan and smooth it down.
- Then cover with foil and place into the freezer to set.
- When the ice cream is set, scoop and serve.
Recipe Tips
Freeze the bowl. Don’t forget to freeze the bowl of your ice cream maker in advance (at least overnight). We just keep ours permanently stored in the freezer so it’s always ready to go when we want to make ice cream.
Let the ice cream sit on the counter at room temperature for 20 minutes. Vegan ice cream does tend to set VERY firmly. I have noticed the same thing in store-bought vegan ice cream so this is a common scenario. You can let the ice cream sit on the countertop for 15-20 minutes before scooping it so that it has softened up a little before scooping.
Heat the ice cream scoop. You can also heat your ice cream scoop in hot water to make scooping the ice cream easier. Just pour hot water from the kettle into a cup and then dip your scoop in the hot water before scooping.
Storing Tips
Homemade ice cream doesn’t last quite as long as store-bought ice cream. It tends to start forming ice crystals after about 2 weeks.
So it’s best to consume all your ice cream within the first 2 weeks after making it.
How To Make Vegan Ice Cream Without A Machine
It is possible to make vegan ice cream without a machine, and we have a couple of recipes that are designed around not needing to churn the ice cream at all, like our vegan cookies and cream ice cream or our peanut butter banana ice cream made in a food processor.
However, if you love making homemade ice cream recipes then getting an ice cream machine is very worthwhile. We have a Cuisinart and it is the bomb diggity. I love it! It churns almost any ice cream I make into a lovely soft serve consistency within about 25 minutes (which is fast).
But, of course if you don’t have one yet then this doesn’t help you.
What an ice cream machine does is incorporate air into the ice cream while it churns and freezes it. It also helps to keep the ice crystals really small so that it has a lovely smooth texture.
So the way to cheat this if you don’t have an ice cream maker is to beat the ice cream mixture in your stand mixer if you have one of those. Then place it into the freezer and before it’s frozen, bring it out a couple more times and beat it again. This will come closest to what you’ll get with an ice cream machine.
More Vegan Ice Cream Recipes
- Vegan Coffee Ice Cream
- Vegan Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
- Vegan Avocado Ice Cream
- Vegan Pistachio Ice Cream
- Vegan Strawberry Ice Cream
- Vegan Coconut Ice Cream
Did you make this recipe? Be sure to leave a comment and rating below!
Vegan Ice Cream
Ingredients
For the Homemade Cashew Milk:
- 1 cup Raw Cashews (150g) Soaked in hot water for one hour
- 1 cup + 2 Tbsp Water (270ml)
For the Ice Cream:
- 2 cups Homemade Cashew Milk (480ml)
- 1 cup Coconut Milk (240ml) Canned, Full Fat, Unsweetened
- 1 cup White Granulated Sugar (200g)
- ¼ cup Water (60ml)
- ¾ cup Cacao Butter (100g) (finely chopped)
- ¼ cup Coconut Oil (55g)
- 1 tsp Salt
- 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
Instructions
- The day before you want to make ice cream, put the bowl for your ice cream machine into the freezer to freeze.
- Prepare your homemade cashew milk. Add the cashews to a bowl. Pour boiling water over the top until they are completely covered and then let them soak for 1 hour. After 1 hour, drain the cashews and add them to the blender jug along with 1 cup + 2 Tbsp fresh cold water and blend very well until smooth and creamy. No need to strain this milk and you will use all of it in your ice cream.*
- Add the homemade cashew milk to a big bowl along with the coconut milk and set aside.
- Then get all your other ingredients ready before proceeding.
- Add the sugar to a saucepan along with the quarter cup of water. Stir constantly until the sugar is melted. You’ll know it’s melted when the wooden spoon is no longer making a scratching sound along the bottom of the saucepan.
- When the sugar is melted, add in the cacao butter, coconut oil and salt and mix in until everything is melted together.
- Add this to the bowl with the cashew milk and coconut milk along with the vanilla extract.
- Blend everything together in the bowl using an immersion blender. If you don’t have an immersion blender, then transfer everything to your blender jug, blend it and then return to the bowl.
- Place the bowl into the freezer for 15 minutes to chill. If you find that the mixture has hardened slightly along the sides of the bowl when chilling, then just stir it up again.
- Pour the mixture into the ice cream machine and churn according to manufacturer instructions until you reach a soft serve consistency. Depending on the ice cream machine you use this could take anywhere from 25-45 minutes.
- When it’s reached soft serve consistency, transfer the ice cream to a loaf pan and smooth it down with the back of a spoon, cover and place into the freezer to set completely.
- When the ice cream has set, scoop into bowls and enjoy.
Video
Notes
- If your batch of cashew milk makes slightly more or slightly less than 2 cups (480ml), don’t worry about it, it should be pretty close so just use all of it in the ice cream. The difference would come about from the amount of water absorbed by the cashews while they’re soaking. It won’t make a difference to your end result if it is a little less or a little more.
- Prep time excludes soaking the cashews, chilling the mixture of the time taken for the ice cream to set in the freezer. It is just for hands on time, including churning.
- Recipe adapted from our cashew ice cream.
This is by far THE BEST ice cream recipe ever! Everyone I ever made this for completely LOVED it! It’s so yummy and versatile! It can be turned into chocolate, peanut butter, raspberry or any other ice cream flavor so easily! Thanks for sharing this recipe! It will be a family staple in our household 😉
Thanks so much Chloé! That’s so awesome to hear!
Our family loves it too! Will you please share your adaptations Chloe?
Hi Alison! Today I made a batch of your ice cream following the recipe step by step. The only thing I have substituted was sugar. Instead I have used xylitol (natural sweetener). After churning ice cream it didn’t come out as stable as yours. What could be the problem? Is it the sugar replacement?
Thank you in advance!
Hi Mariya, I haven’t tried this with any sugar substitutes but it could definitely change the texture.
Allulose is a good sugar replacement in ice cream recipes. It doesn’t adversely effect texture the way sugar alcohols do. It is less sweet than sugar.
This recipe is SO GOOD! I wouldn’t believe it’s dairy free if I hadn’t made it myself lol. I didn’t have cacao butter, so I increased the coconut oil to 1/2c instead of 1/4, and it turned out great! Thank you for the recipe!
So happy to hear that Brittany! Thanks so much for the great review.
This is definitely the best vegan ice cream recipe I’ve made. I used this as a base for a chocolate peanut butter ice cream. The texture is spot on! The cacao butter has kind of a strong flavor, so I’m not sure I’d enjoy it as a plain vanilla, but overall it’s nearly perfect!
Thanks so much for sharing Natalie! And chocolate peanut butter sounds amazing, I need to try that!
So so good, my go to recipe! Thanks
Awesome! Thanks so much Astrid!
Wondering is I could sub a natural sweetener for the 1 cup sugar, either maple syrup or honey. Will that mess with the texture? If so would maple sugar work? Would you adjust measurements for any of these alternatives?
Hi Julie, if you use a sugar like maple sugar or coconut sugar that will be fine.
Hello! me and my friend are in the planning stagesof selling ice cream and i think this recipie is great! So I have two questions.
1. If we want to make it in bigger quantities what do we need to have in mind? or is it just as easy as doubling it?
2. If we want to add other flavours, do we just substitute the vanilla extract and vanilla beans and use the other part as the base?
You’re doing a great job and I must say that spreading veganism to people trough taste like you do is the best way!
Sincerely Robert and Kalle.
Hi Robert, I don’t see any issue with doubling or tripling the recipe. You can definitely also play around with the flavors but using the same method. All the best!
Hi,
Your recipe sounds amazing. I was wondering if you knew how many litre of ice cream your recipes make? I know it says 10 servings but wanted a brief idea of how much that would be in litres.
Many thanks in advance!
It’s approximately 1/2 cup per serving so 5 cups (1.2 liters). This is approximate though as I didn’t measure it exactly.
Hi! I made the cashew milk but come to find out my grocery store doesn’t carry cocoa butter. Do you have a suitable substitute I could use? Thanks!
You can get it online, or you can just leave it out of the recipe. The texture won’t be quite as good, but it will still be very delicious!
Hi.!Can i use other vegan milks instead of cashew milk for this recipe?
Most vegan milks would not be rich enough. This is homemade cashew milk and it’s more like a cream than milk. You could use coconut cream, but then it will be more like a coconut ice cream, the cashew/coconut mix creates a very neutral flavor profile.
Hi Alison! Do you think it is possible to avoid the coconut milk by adding more cashew milk and cocoa butter? I amtrying to figure out how to make vegan ice cream without any coconut flavor 🙂
Hi Tina, the mix of the two milks in this ice cream ensures no coconut flavor. However, you could just make it all cashew milk if you like! 🙂
Can you skip the beginning steps and use store bought cashew milk?
No, because store-bought cashew milk is not as thick and creamy as the homemade one we use here.
How much is 1 serving of this? like how many cups or oz
About half a cup.
Thank you for posting this recipe, I am constantly amazed by the vegan innovations people come up with. I would like to make an orange sherbet flavor, how should I go about that? When do I add the juice, how much and should I reduce any liquid to make up for it? Thank you so much!
Hi Dakota, you probably would need to reduce the amount of cashew cream/coconut milk to account for however much orange juice you want to add. I would probably also add in an orange extract or orange zest to intensify the flavor.
Hi! I have been experimenting with making vegan ice creams for a while that are super creamy without nuts a) because my brother is vegan and I am trying to be and b) because he is allergic to tree nuts. I have tried making ice creams with mainly coconut milk/cream as the creamy base but it always comes out too coconutty and sweet. I am not sure what I am doing wrong 🙁
Make sure the coconut cream/milk you’re using is canned and unsweetened. And then you can reduce sugar too if you like. But unfortunately if you can’t do the cashew milk then it is hard to get the neutral flavor profile that you get with the mix of the two milks, and it will taste a little coconutty. You can experiment with hiding that by adding chocolate or coffee or other flavors. We have quite a few ice cream recipes on the blog (just use the search bar).