Ice cream

Vegan chocolate ice cream in one of Taipei's Loving Hut restaurants.

Vegan ice cream found in Seoul

A box of azuki bean ice cream in Japan.

Ice cream is a frozen dessert. Most commonly it is made out of cow's milk and therefore is not vegan. Fortunately, ice cream can be also produced by using plant milk (soy milk, oat milk, rice milk, coconut milk), or simply out of frozen fruits or juices. There are many types of such vegan ice cream. They are especially popular in Western European and North American countries, and can be bought in supermarkets as well as in gelato places.

Production

Ice cream is produced by making a base out of soy or some kind of other plant milk (or a mixture of them), and adding flavoring ingredients, such as vanilla, cocoa, berries, etc. The whole mixture is then frozen while mixing it at the same time.

Ice cream can be easily made at home if one has an ice cream making machine that does both freezing and mixing. An alternative is to freeze ice cream without mixing and then soften the resulting block by cutting it with a food processor or blender.

Soft and creamy ice cream can also be easily made by freezing peeled and cut into pieces bananas for 5-6 hours. They then have to be blended.

Notable brands

• Oatly is a Swedish company that makes (among other things) ice cream out of oats. Their products can be found mostly in Northern Europe, especially Scandinavia.
• Tofutti is one of the most prevalent ice cream brands in North America.
• Swedish Glace can be found in UK and other Northern European countries. Their ice cream is amazing, however, the brand is now owned by Unilever.

Books

Try these recipe books to get detailed instructions how to make vegan ice cream at home:

• The Vegan Scoop (2009)
• The Spunky Coconut Dairy-Free Ice Cream Cookbook (2012)
• Vegan a la Mode (2012)

Links

• Homemade Blackberry Soy Ice Cream (video)