Greetings Hive foodies. I hope you all have been well. Here in Cambodia it has been a crazy few weeks, hence my Hive absence. It has been very busy at work, we did some garden work, and did some fun stuff with friends.

I also squeezed in 2 tattoo sessions (another one coming upon next week) to get my back piece finished. My friend is going back to Europe for a few months so we wanted to finish this amazing, but very intense project.

While all these things kept me quite busy I have been very active in the kitchen too, but I haven't found time to post any of my recipes until today.

Since I have a lot of free time this weekend I thought I start off with the vegan ice cream as I want to give this recipe another go as soon as possible. But I need your help!

My first attempt making vegan ice cream wasn’t a complete failure but I can't call it a grand success either. Hence this post.

I am hoping that we have some more experienced vegan ice cream makers here on Hive that can help me out.

Let's start with the good

It was super easy to make, though it takes some stirring dedication if you don't own an ice cream maker.

Second, the flavor was absolutely spot on. Though I just found some real vanilla beans, which is going to make my next batch even better, it tasted great with the vanilla extract and dark, vegan chocolate chips.

The bad

It was rock hard - Unscoopable.

Even when you left it out on the counter for 5-10 min, only the sides were melting, but the middle remained a solid mass.

Though the ice cream was super hard, it didn't have any ice crystals, which means I stirred it enough while hardening. But I would very much like to improve the consistency.

I am asking you all for help to improve this recipe

I will share the ingredients and preparation method below.

So if you have made vegan, creamy, scoopable ice cream before - PLEASE HELP.

It's so hot atm that I really would love a cold, healthy, vegan snack. We are slowly moving from the rainy season into the dry season, while the temperatures aren't as high as in April and May (the hottest months of the year), it is very humid. Sticky, sweaty weather, so we are all dying for ice cream.

The Recipe

825ml or 28 fl. oz. coconut cream
¼ cup cane sugar
Pinch of Himalayan pink salt
2-3 tsp vanilla extract
⅓ cup vegan dark choc chips

I used white cane sugar, though I wanted to use the raw, brown version for this, but apparently, we didn't have any left. However, I don't think this will change the result and make the ice cream any better.

I added all ingredients, except choc chips, into a blender and blended the mixture until smooth and creamy.

I poured the mixture into a container and stirred in the chocolate chips.

FYI: I do not have an ice cream maker, but I don't think that would have made any difference in the end result.

For the first 2 hours, I stirred every 20 minutes, after that every 30-40 minutes to avoid ice crystal forming during the freezing process.

Once I had a tick soft-serve consistency I stopped stirring and let it harden overnight.

I was actually pretty happy about its creaminess when I stopped stirring the mixture every 30-40 minutes. I was so confident that thanks to using thick coconut cream instead of coconut milk it was going to be perfect to make the most beautiful scoops to serve my hubby.

The disappointment was great, but this isn’t stopping me. We both loved the flavor, even though we had to cut our way through it to scoop some into a bowl.