Dairy-Free Ice Cream on the AIP

Following the auto-immune protocol is challenging, but particularly when you love ice cream as much as I do! I have been enjoying commercially-made coconut milk ice cream in moderation, but I know it has a few ingredients, like guar gum, that I really should be avoiding. The only way to get ice cream without it is to make it myself or visit one of the very few ice cream makers who avoid it. 

So I recently experimented. I’ve been craving caramel and I had extra cacao chips leftover from the cookies, so those things shaped what I made. I ended up bouncing between a couple of recipes for the ice cream, and I mixed it by hand instead of using an ice cream maker to see if this was doable on the road in an RV!

Here’s one of the recipes I used from A Squirrel in the Kitchen. It’s basically coconut milk, vanilla (not strictly AIP but I have been able to tolerate it, and there are other options too) and maple syrup. I added the cacao chips. I combined that recipe with this one from The Tasty Alternative, which made me think I could avoid heating the ingredients and simply blend, add chips and freeze. I then followed her recipe for “caramel” sauce exactly, using honey and skipping the optional cashew butter since I haven’t reintroduced that. Once the mixture went into the freezer, I stirred it by hand, taking care to scrape the sides, every 20-25 minutes until it was at a suitable ice cream consistency a few hours later. I used a small Tupperware for storing it, so you can really make anything work. I highly recommend trying this. It’s really tasty, pretty easy and skips all of the nasty stuff added to most commercial ice cream. The caramel sauce is amazing (my husband was pretty jealous) and could easily be used for other recipes too. Moderation is key – be sure to use a small bowl so you can really enjoy it! Once I exhaust my supply of store-bought coconut milk ice cream I hope to switch to homemade generally in the future. And if you aren’t strictly AIP and love ice cream, check out my ice cream blog for clues on the best sources of delicious ice cream! 

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful week. I’m proud to say I’ve been doing a great job with weight training every other day. I hope you’re persisting in making the time to exercise too!