Vegan Chocolate Ice Cream

For my birthday, I got an ice cream maker - a very essential tool for someone that is addicted to ice cream. It's my comfort food, being also refreshing and oh so tasty in so many flavors. With the machine, I ordered a Vegan ice cream recipe book "The Vegan Scoop". Next to having ALOT of ice cream recipes, it also has recipes for baking goods, sauces and such. So it is worth it's money - I think.

My first try was the Vegan peanut butter ice cream, that was good but a bit too peanutty..... I had to make that first, because I needed to find a main ingredient for Vegan ice cream first: arrowroot powder! I finally did and so I tried the basic chocolate ice cream. Very general, but tasty enough... It was made with soy milk and soy creamer, and something was missing.....

Then I remembered that my friend Beth had made it once with coconut milk. Now I needed to find that ingredient, which wasn't easy! I finally did find it in the back of the Asian aisle!!! Yep, not the baking aisle.

So without further ado, I will share HER recipe with you: Double Chocolate Coconut Milk Ice Cream.
With the added chocolate, it makes about 1 1/2 quarts.
 
Ingredients
2/3 c Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder, sifted (or run through a blender or food processor--however you prefer to get the lumps out). You can use regular cocoa powder, but it won't be as rich of a chocolate flavor.
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
pinch salt
2 cans of coconut milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 ounce vegan chocolate (I use 4 squares Baker's semisweet baking chocolate, which is vegan)

Instructions:
1. If you plan ahead far enough, pre-refrigerate the coconut milk.
2. Whisk together the cocoa powder, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and salt.
3. Whisk in the coconut milk and vanilla until the solids are as dissolved as you can get them. Mine wasn't that smooth, but that was okay.
4. Place the mixture in the fridge for at least an hour before freezing/churning it. If you pre-refrigerated the coconut milk, this step is optional.
5. Follow your ice cream maker's instructions to churn/freeze the mixture.
6. While it's churning, cut the chocolate into chunks. Add to the ice cream during the last 3 minutes or so of churning.
6. Eat immediately (soft-serve consistency) or move to another container and freeze. You'll want to remove it from the freezer approximately 15-20 minutes before serving--it gets very hard in the freezer.

This time, I added a bit too much DARK cocoa powder, so it is extra dark..... but still tasty for me to eat it right now while typing this. The little chocolate pieces are a nice extra - at first, I was not sure if I wanted them in there.... The coconut goes so well with the chocolate, I think I will always make it this way rather than with soy milk. I wonder if rice milk would work?