Vanilla Coconut Ice Cream

I got such a great response from my Dairy Free Chocolate Ice Cream recipe that I decided to make a vanilla version (also, my husband wouldn’t stop pestering me to make vanilla ice cream sandwiches with the Dense Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe). But, I’m really happy I did because this ice cream turned out wonderfully. When you put a dollop on the cookies it melts into the cookie and creates this amazingly cool, doughy, chocolate flavor that makes you want to eat way more than one. The ice cream itself has a very creamy texture and gets lots of vanilla flavor from both the extract and the protein powder. Also, the protein powder gives this treat a little extra nutrition. As always, I made this sugar-free by using zsweet but you could use splenda, real sugar or any other kind of sweetener that you prefer.

If you want to make your ice cream look fancy and taste amazing you can use a real vanilla bean in place of the vanilla extract. It’s very easy to do, you just get a real vanilla bean from your local grocery store, split it open, scrape out the vanilla and put the scrapings in the ice cream mixture before you blend it. Also, since this is vanilla you could totally add any kind of “mix-in” like chocolate chips or nut to make this into your favorite flavor.

As you break out the ice cream maker, remember that when you make homemade ice cream it won’t keep for as long as store bought and it can freeze harder because it doesn’t have a lot of chemicals to keep it soft. But the flavor and nutrition makes it worth it to create your own! This recipe kept perfectly for about a week which is more than enough time to enjoy the whole batch. Also, I used two tablespoons of vodka in the recipe (which you couldn’t taste) and it helped keep the ice cream soft enough to scoop for the entire week. Enjoy!