I held off my decision to go diary-free for several months because I love ice-cream so much!

I couldn’t imagine life without that luscious delicious treat. When I was younger, my ‘aunt J.’ used to say that ice-cream was the only reason to get out of bed in the morning, and of course, sex was the only reason to go to bed at night. I thought she was so glamorous then and wanted to be just like her when I grew up.

Even though I’ve discovered a few other reasons more to get out of bed in the morning, my passion for ice-cream somewhat parallels aunt J’s. This is why I reconsidered my decision to go dairy-free several times.

I eventually went diary-free and gave up ice-cream momentarily while I searched for alternatives. Soy was out of the question because I don’t do soy. I discovered coconut milk ice-cream a few months ago when the Purely Decadent put out a Coconut Milk Ice-Cream, everything I’d seen before then had some sort of soy product in it, this was the first dairy free, soy free ice cream product I’d seen.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t available in Canada, so I tried it on one of my trips down south and I loved it!

Then there’s Luna & Larry’s Coconut Bliss which I’ve heard tastes even better, but then again it’s not available in Canada.

My local Whole Foods soon started carrying Purely Decadent Coconut Milk Ice Cream and I was elated, I bought them regularly for a few weeks but that quickly weaned – it costs $6.99CAD a pint; not exactly cheap.

This was when I started looking into making my own coconut milk ice cream; I searched around the internet and found a perfect and simple recipe and modified it as thus:

• 2 cans of coconut milk
• 1 medium sized banana
• 3 – 4 tablespoons of honey
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• A pinch of salt

I mixed and blended all ingredients in a blender, transferred the mixture into my Cusinart ice cream maker and churned it for about 40mins and then froze it. It came out delicious, rich and creamy.

The only hitch was that I have to leave it out of the freezer for a few minutes to thaw otherwise it’s a little hard. It was actually pretty good for a first try; it has the consistency of soft serve ice cream and it’s delicious.

I’m going to try some adding in different things – this weekend I’m going to do a beet, ginger ice cream but I’ll add in a little bit of arrowroot powder to help with the hardening issue.