Vegan chocolate almond ice cream is rich with mocha flavor. Made with coffee, coconut milk, and almond butter for a frozen delight your whole family will love!
Click here for all the delicious homemade ice cream recipes, sorbets, and other frozen treats from Veggie Fun Kitchen.
This vegan chocolate ice cream was developed because I frankly couldn’t tolerate the vegan ice cream choices available at my grocery store. I’ve heard of specialty shops with rich and creamy vegan ice cream that actually tastes good. What a dream! Sadly, we don’t have anything like that anywhere near our small town.
So I had to recreate the vegan ice cream specialty shop at home! And you can too.
Table of contents
For some other fabulous vegan ice cream recipes try:
- Sweet Cream Ice Cream
- Pumpkin Spice Ice Cream
- Easy Strawberry Banana Ice Cream – Vegan with Coconut Milk
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Ingredients needed to make this smooth, rich, vegan chocolate ice cream:
- Medjool dates – pitted and soaked in hot water
- strong coffee
- canned coconut milk
- granulated sugar
- oats – old fashioned, not quick oats
- almond butter
- cocoa powder – unsweetened
- vanilla extract
- optional almonds – sliced, slivered, or chopped
- optional chocolate sauce
- The FudgiestVegan Chocolate Sauce with Coconut Milk is the best!
- optional coffee extract flavoring
- You’ll also need a high-speed blender and an ice cream maker.
How to make the best vegan chocolate almond ice cream:
Cooking the vegan custard:
We are starting out my making a nice thick custard as our base.
Brew yourself some nice strong black coffee. You can also make instant coffee – just make it strong!
If you don’t want to use coffee, you can use an equal portion of water and add in some coffee extract. Start with 1/2 teaspoon and go from there.
If that still doesn’t make you happy, then just use water or plant milk. Be aware though that a depth of flavor will be missing and your chocolate almond ice cream will not be as rich. That’s the whole point of “mocha”.
On med/high, cook while stirring, the coffee, coconut milk, and sugar in a medium-sized saucepan until it comes to a gentle boil.
Turn down to med/low and continue cooking for 10 more minutes. At the 5 minute mark, stir in the uncooked oats.
Turn off the heat and cool the mixture. You can put it in the freezer for an hour or in the fridge for 3 hours.
The Medjool dates:
While the coffee/coconut cream mixture is cooling, take the pits out of the Medjool dates and soak them in hot water. You will need to soak for 30 minutes to an hour depending on how fresh your dates are.
Never cooked with Medjool dates? Read this post: 13 Facts You Never Knew About Medjool Dates and learn all about them!
Blending and freezing:
After the coconut cream/coffee mixture is cooled, simply pour it into your high-speed blender along with the soaked and pitted Medjool dates, almond butter, cocoa powder, vanilla and salt.
Blend until everything is smooth and creamy. Give it a little taste. The coffee flavor of this ice cream is meant to add a subtle depth of flavor – not in-your-face obvious coffee. But, if you were looking for more of a coffee flavor you can always add in 1/2 teaspoon of coffee extract or a teaspoon of instant coffee granules.
Pour the mixture in your ice cream maker/freezer and follow the manufacturer’s directions.
Is it done yet?
Nope! If you are new to home ice cream freezers you may not know this. But when it’s “done”, it’s not really done. The ice cream will be like soft serve (and very tasty), but it still needs to harden in the freezer. Simply spoon the ice cream into a freezer safe container, and put in your freezer for a few more hours or overnight.
I like to sprinkle chopped almonds and drizzle chocolate on top. Then after it’s frozen, I just scoop up all the good ice cream/almond/chocolate goodness!
Serving Suggestions:
When you first take the ice cream out of the freezer it will be quite hard. Set it on your counter for about ten minutes before scooping.
This chocolate almond ice cream would be fantastic with either:
Homemade Vegan Salted Caramel Sauce or The Fudgiest Vegan Chocolate Sauce!
So which are you? Team Caramel or Team Chocolate?
And now for the recipe:
Did you love this recipe? Want to share the love? It would thrill me if you could leave ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ stars and even a comment. Did you know that this will help google to find this recipe when others are looking for something similar? Thanks, Cindy
Chocolate Almond Ice Cream with Rich Mocha Flavor (Vegan)
Equipment
- stovetop and pan
- blender
- ice cream maker
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup coffee strong
- 13.5 ounces canned coconut milk full fat
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 10 Medjool dates pitted and soaked
- 1/3 cup old fashioned oats do NOT use quick oats
- hot water to cover dates discard after soaking
- 1/3 cup almond butter
- 1 Tablespoon cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon optional coffee extract flavoring
Instructions
- Add strong coffee, coconut milk, and sugar to a medium-sized saucepan.
- Bring to a boil, stirring, then turn down to med/low and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally for 10 minutes.
- Add in the old fashioned oats the last 5 minutes of simmering.
- Remove from heat and put in the freezer or refrigerator till cooled. Read the directions of your ice cream maker. If the directions require that the mixture be cold before putting in the ice cream maker, then cool completely.
- While the coffee/coconut milk mixture is cooling, take the pits out of the Medjool dates and cover with hot water. Soak until softened. 30 minutes – 3 hours depending on the age of your dates.
- Drain the water from the soaked and pitted Medjool dates. Discard the water.
- Put the pitted, soaked, and drained Medjool dates in a high-speed blender. Add in the cooled coffee/coconut milk/oat mixture, the almond butter, cocoa powder, vanilla, and salt. Blend on high for several minutes or until the mixture is very smooth and creamy.
- If you are going to add the optional coffee extract, give the blended mixture a taste first to see if you want your mocha ice cream to have a stronger coffee flavor. Add the extract if desired and blend a few seconds to mix in.
- Pour mixture into an ice cream maker. Follow the manufacturer's directions to freeze the ice cream.
- Pour in a freezer-safe container. I use a flat rectangular container. See notes for the product link. You may optionally add chopped or slivered almonds, or drizzle chocolate syrup on top.
Notes
- You can use any ice cream freezer. The one I use happens to be a high-end compressor freezer. That means you don’t need to freeze the bowl first because the freezer is build into the machine!
- When you first take the ice cream out of your freezer, it will be too hard to scoop. Leave it sitting on your counter for about ten minutes to allow it to soften slightly. Patience is a virtue they say 💜
What a genius recipe! It sounds absolutely scrumptious and the fact that it is vegan puts it over the top for me. Thanks for sharing the recipe!