Blog

Purple Sweet Potato Ice Cream

August 21, 2017 · Natalie 34 Comments

This Purple Sweet Potato Ice Cream is a dazzlingly delicious vegan and paleo dessert made in the blender with almond milk so it’s easy and healthy too!

Purple + ice cream. I cannot say no to a request that includes all my favorite things.

I told myself that this would be my last ice cream recipe for the summer. Made a mental promise to not post any more frozen scoop-able things. That lasted all of three days. Because then a lovely reader with very good ice cream tastes requested a purple sweet potato ice cream. And if you didn’t know this about me, purple food is sorta my can’t-resist weakness.

So here we are again – cone in hand, sweet stuff fast-melting, no churn recipe coming atcha!

I started this summer with mostly nice cream recipes plus one classically churned ice cream. But as the delicious season has carried along, I’ve come to love no-churn but banana-free ice creams best of all. Kinda like a combination of the two but no fancy machine necessary.

Plus there are so many different ways to go about making the blender base: nut butter, coconut, avocado, and this recipe is adding a low-fat option to that creamy dreamy list.

Because sweet potatoes are thick, sweet, blend-able, and (possibly) purple. Actually any kind/color of sweet potato will work here, although I do think the purple ones are especially sweet and tasty. Plus I have a sneaky-smart blender trick I stole from nice cream to turn banana-free ice creams into silky soft-serve consistency too.

With all of my no-churn ice cream recipes so far, adding a higher fat ingredient keeps the texture creamy even after freezing overnight. Even if it seems solid, ten or so minutes at room temp will soften it to scoop-able. But since this sweet potato version is made with from-a-carton almond milk and I skipped the dates for color purposes, thawing won’t magically make it creamy. But a high speed blender will!

If you freeze the ice cream base in a pan and then break it into chunks the next day (or even use an ice cube tray for automatic chunks!), you can pop those chunks back in the blender and blend to luscious ice cream bliss. Or a food processor will work too, although it will take a bit longer and more stops along the way. After blending the texture will be very similar to nice cream, so eat it as is or refreeze for about 30 minutes then scoop.

If all of that blending sounds like too much work to you, use full-fat coconut milk to start with and the second blend won’t be necessary. But we are talking about dazzling purpledelicious dessert-ness here, so it’s worth the double blend effort if you ask me.

Enough about the purple process though, let’s get to the ingredients in this good stuff…

Purple sweet potato. Obviously. I baked and mashed about five teeny tiny purple sweet potatoes. But if you have average-sized sweets, one or two will be enough. The microwave or oven works here, that’s up to you. As I mentioned, any color sweet potato will be fine here – orange, white…okay those are really the only other options. But note that the purple ones are very sweet, so if you use a regular orange one you may want to up the sweetening amount a little bit.

Maple syrup. I opted for maple syrup as the sweetener because dates would’ve marred the magical color and maple syrup is my next favorite form of sugar after Medjools. A quarter cup was plenty with these very sweet potatoes, but taste and adjust as needed. Or perhaps even skip it if the natural potato sweetness is enough for you.

Almond milk. Any kind of non-dairy milk is fine, I just happened to have almond in my fridge at the time. Cashew would be great, coconut from a can or carton would be extra rich, and homemade would be delicious! You want to use equal parts mashed sweet potato to non-dairy milk, so for me that was 2 cups of each. But you can multiply to make a bigger batch too.

Vanilla + sea salt. Optional, but both amp up the flavor. So I suggest a dash and a sprinkle.

Purple potato perfection, no magic or unicorns required. But feel free to add either.

Purple Sweet Potato Ice Cream

★★★★★ 4.8 from 5 reviews

Yield: 4 people 1x

Print Recipe

Description

This Purple Sweet Potato Ice Cream is a dazzlingly delicious vegan and paleo dessert made in the blender with almond milk so it’s easy and healthy too!

Ingredients

Scale

2 cups purple sweet potato ((baked and mashed))
2 cups non-dairy milk ((almond milk used))
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
Pinch of sea salt

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Add all the ingredients to a blender, and blend on high until creamy and smooth with no chunks.
Pour into a shallow dish or ice cube tray and freeze overnight.
The following day, remove from the freezer for 5 minutes to thaw. Then break into chunks.
Re-blend the chunks in a high speed blender or food processor until thick and creamy like soft-serve. You will need to use the tamper or stop and scrape down the sides frequently.
Serve immediately. Or spread into a shallow dish and re-freeze for 30-60 minutes until scoop-able.
Enjoy!

Pin It

Date-Sweetened Rice Crispy Treats

August 15, 2017 · Natalie 94 Comments

Healthy vegan rice crispy treats made with Medjool dates and almond butter instead of marshmallows for a sweet sticky refined sugar-free cereal snack!

Gather all your squishy mushy marshy-mallows…and eat them straight from the bag while you make these mallow-less crispy treats.

Just because these squares don’t require a single marshmallow doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pick up a bag for casual snacking while you are in the area. And by area I mean the grocery store. Yes I do realize marshmallows aren’t usually located on the cereal aisle, but if you take the long cut from produce to cereal I’m sure you can work in a nohcalant marshmallow stop. Last time I was grocery shopping the entire marshmallow aisle was scented with the most glorious aroma of sugar and squishiness and I practically had to be dragged out of there.

But enough marshmallow talk for a marshmallow-FREE recipe.

It’s not that I don’t love pillows of fluffy sugar, it’s just that I love rice crispy treats even more (wait…did I just say that?) And I have been dreaming of the day I can finally make them without even a drop of non-fruity sugar for approximately my whole life.

Marshmallows have finally met their rice crispy-making match. A squishy sweet replacement to knock them right out of their sticky cereal treat spot. A replacement that is all natural. A replacement that is actually easier to find than vegan marshmallows. A replacement that makes these crispy squares taste like they accidentally fell into a bucket of caramel sauce only to be pulled out in the nick of time. I know you know what I’m talking about…

Medjool dates!

I am partnering with my friends at Natural Delights once again to bring you a deliciously date-sweetened recipe. A recipe that at one point I thought was impossible without sugar or syrup of some kind.

From someone as date-obsessed as me, why did i doubt the Medjool magic? Well lemme just tell you about my past experience trying to make unconventional rice crispy treats…

I’ve set out on this marshmallow-free and sticky syrup-less mission many times. The problem usually arises with the CRISPY part of the rice crispy treat goal.

Because you know how rice crispies will snap crackle and pop their way to sogginess if left in a bowl of milk for too long? Well the same sorta situation happens when they are mixed with a water-based date paste. Soggy. Sad. Mushy. Mess.

So water, milk, and cereal bowls were out.

Liquid things that will not make rice crispies soggy include: liquid sweeteners, oils, and nut butters. But I wanted these squares to be sweetened with only dates and oil-free as usual around here, so by process of elimination it had to be nut butter.

The key to preserving the crispy-ness is to make a date paste with only Medjool dates and nut butter, in this case I used almond butter. Obviously an especially runny nut butter is ideal here, as well as a high speed blender. A food processor will get you there eventually, but it may take some patience and lots of stopping to scrape down the sides. The end goal is a very thick sticky-sweet paste that will not turn the cereal soggy.

If you must add some kind of liquid because your nut butter is just too thick, maple syrup or coconut oil are your best options. Neither will ruin the crispy-ness, and just a few tablespoons should get things blending better. But hopefully that won’t be necessary.

There is one seemingly minor but not-to-be-missed step that I need to point out before we get to the fun part, and that is to heat the date paste before mixing it with the cereal. It won’t really melt or change in appearance at all, but trust me it’s important!

I made one batch with and one batch without this 30 seconds of microwave time, and wow did it make a huge difference. The non-heated batch was much harder to mix, and I ended up crushing far too many rice crispies trying. Plus the bars didn’t set as well in the fridge either. So whether you choose the microwave or stovetop method, heat up that sticky stuff and don’t make the same mistake.

That’s right, rice crispy treats can now officially be considered “wholesome” (whatever that means). So move them from the processed practically dessert list to the healthy practically breakfast list in your snack brainspace. Because cereal + fruit + nut butter is basically all that’s in these crunchy cubes-o’-crispiness, and everything on that list sounds on-the-go morning munching approved to me. Or lunchbox packable. Or dessert perfect. There are no date-sweeetened rice crispy treat consumption rules here.

Happy sticky cereal square snacking!