Vegan Blackberry Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream (Me And Ice Cream Go Way Back)

Our house requires a pint of ice cream--minimally--for proper functioning. If there is no cake, there is ice cream. If there are no cookies, there is ice cream. I have always had a special relationship with ice cream. Recently hubby and I had been on a tear with our ice cream needs. Like needing it every. single. night. This hateful summer weather had taken its toll on us both. It's much nicer today--like in the upper eighties. . . I know, not resort weather yet, but because the entire Midwest has been on the brink of losing it--we'll take it--no complaints from this girl.

My first job EVER was working for Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop. The thirty-one flavor center of the universe was my life when I was a wee fifteen years old. I got hired by sheer luck and happenstance. My mom refused to let me take myself down the road to the Sonic Drive-In for my first job as one of my best friends had done. No daughter of hers was sporting a short skirt, roller skates and delivering food at a drive-up window joint. Blah. Blah. Blah. She had a total hissy fit over the very thought. (To this day, I am still sort of steamed about it because my friend that got a job there totally loved it and I was always and forever jealous of the fact that she got to roller skate at work while I got tennis elbow scooping hard, VERY hard ice cream!) So, when I told Mommy Dearest I had an option at BR--wearing, NOT a skirt and roller skates, but rather a cute pink baseball cap and polyseter pink and striped ice-creamy-colored top with brown polyester pants--life got much better. I got hired to scoop ice cream. I was paid $2.50 an hour. Did I just "date" myself there? So to say that I have a "special relationship" with ice cream, well, you can see, I really do. 

About our ice cream thingy here and now. Finally, we fronted the money for our own ice cream maker, but were leary of how or what we might be able to conjure up now that we'd "settled" our ice cream-less worries. First test of course: chocolate. Was it amazing? Well, kinda, however, I still had to have my cookie dough ice cream fix before the night was over. Something with the "creamy" factor failed to wow us both with our first chocolate ice cream experiment. Then week two approached and we had seen a chef of some kind somewhere in the TV wacthing black hole moment of either Food Network or Bravo (probably Top Chef), where we saw an ice cream that made us both go: THAT's It! We wanted to make our own version of whatever it was we saw--we think it was blackberry chocolate chip. We had ice cream blindness. We went with that--the blackberry kind. . . oh and chocolate, too. 

I'm big on researching until I just get so sick and tired of something that: a) I throw my hands up in the air and proclaim I am now a genius at whatever it was I wanted to find out about, or b) read even further to the point of oblivion and then proclaim I am officially sick of whatever it was I wanted to find out about. I came really close to option "B" in my research of all things "vegan ice cream". But one thing was clear, you could have amazing vegan ice cream--we had a freezer full of it to prove it.  

I will state for the record here that we bought the Cuisinart ice cream maker. Having only previously seen my father-in-law make his minty grasshopper ice cream at Christmas with this honking huge ice cube and rock salt contraption--not hand cranked thankfully--I was a little skeptical of the outcome we'd have with this very "teeny"-by-comparison ice cream maker. Fear not. This puppy works, okay? This is not a plug, I'm just telling you the truth. Here's a picture of the ice cream maker working its miracle.

It took us about 25 minutes from the start of the "churning" to the point we felt the ice cream could then be placed in the freezer for proper coldness magic to take place--and wait another three hours or so for the thickening to happen. Let me add--please don't think you can run out NOW and get one of these and be up to your eyeballs in ice cream by tonight. You must freeze the container that holds the ice cream mixture first. After my "research" I learned it would be best to let the container sit overnight in the freezer--about twenty-four hours worked for us.

Adding our own touch to this was a lot easier than I am going to make it sound. I mean, I used a recipe, sort of. But I also depended upon the old taste and test method of measure, texture and flavor. A little of this here, a little of that there. I ALSO used the Vitamix Blender on the blackberries. How was life before Vitamixer possible!?

The ice cream professional in me rates this batch of vegan blackberry chocolate chunk ice cream a TEN! That's right! It gets a ten! Now the chocolate vegan ice cream dilemma still has yet to be solved. Here's why we so loved this batch: We kicked the creaminess factor up about three-fold. And I'll be honest with you--Mr. Thyme (aka Mr. Wizard) actually solved the fat content and cream content issue for our vegan version. It's all in the coconut . . . in the organic creamed coconut and coconut milk. Plus just a pinch of olive oil or canola oil and things got even better from there.

Again. . . the process of making your own ice cream will, eventually, make you a better vegan ice cream maker. Here is my recipe re-cap for you. You may want to change this to suit your own vegan ice cream requirements. For us, this worked just fine.

Vegan Blackberry Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream

2 packages fresh blackberries (rinsed)
1 cup unsweetened soy milk (1/4 cup set aside)
3 tablespoons arrowroot
3/4 cup sucanat sugar or light brown sugar
1/4 cup Florida Crystals sugar or the white kind
1 can coconut milk
1/4 cup cream of coconut
4 oz. baking chocolate--the good stuff, chopped up into bite-sized pieces
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract (added toward the end of churning)
1 teaspoon canola oil or olive oil
2 tablespoons soy creamer
pinch of salt

Place your rinsed fresh blackberries in a food processor or Vitamixer. Puree until the seeds and fruit are all smooth. Set aside. In a small bowl whisk together the arrowroot and 1/4 cup of the soy milk. Set aside. In a large saucepan over medium heat, add the can of coconut milk and all of the sugar together--whisk well until the sugar is dissolved. Don't let this come to a boil--just keep it warm. Now, add the cream of coconut and soy milk with arrowroot and remaining soy milk. Mix well--keep on low heat. Add the blackberries to the saucepan. Mix well--the liquid will be getting thicker. Turn off the heat after the berries are well incorporated. Remove from heat. Allow to cool for about fifteen minutes. Then, pour the mixture into a container--plastic, and cover, then place in the freezer for two hours. (This is what I did to have the cream mixture "really" cool prior to placing in the ice cream maker.) Pour the cool, somewhat frozen mixture into your ice cream maker and follow the directions per the manufacturer. Here's what we did. We set a timer for 25 minutes. While the mixture churned--it got thicker and thicker. During the last five minutes of churning, add the bit of vanilla extract, pinch of salt, canola oil and soy creamer. Allow this to incorporate. The last addition will be your chocolate chunks--allow to incorporate. Place the ice cream in a container and put in the freezer for about 2-3 hours. Enjoy!