Kitchen Adventures; Strawberry Coconut Ice Cream

I saw this on Shutterbean. I had to make it. End of story.

OK, that's not the end of the story. It's actually part of a short, but kind of funny, kind of annoying story involving never having the ingredients I thought I had and an ice cream maker with missing parts. Still haven't torn my kitchen apart looking for those.

I saw this recipe last week. I'd had my ice cream maker in the freezer for months and months, waiting for the right ice cream to come along.

I looked in my fridge and pantry, knowing full well I didn't have agave or vanilla powder or coconut water, but sure that I had coconut cream somewhere. (I didn't)

A trip to Trader Joes later and I have everything I need... minus the coconut cream, which I thought I had, but actually didn't. And a lemon or lemon juice because "F it. I have lime juice" (Lime juice is better anyway, you can spread that around)

A special trip out to Sprouts ends with coconut cream and marshmallows (late afternoon pregnancy snack between teaching classes) and I go home after teaching my final class of the night, get the ice cream maker out of the freezer and realize I don't have a clue where the mixing piece is.

Instead of tearing apart my kitchen, I text my mother-in-law to see if we left it down there last time we made ice cream. We did not.

I decided to go the no ice cream maker route, and I remove said ice cream maker from the freezer out of frustration and decide it will stay thawed until we can locate all the pieces... or I have to call Kitchenaid for new pieces. Womp.

Ice cream making goes on. Favorite scraper in hand. Gingerbread men are year 'round in my house... on spatulas.

Smashy smash smash, followed by freezy freeze freeze...

aaaaand VOILA!

Ice cream I don't feel bad about eating because its dairy free and sweetened with agave.

Strawberry Coconut Ice Cream
Adapted from Shutterbean

2 cups strawberries
1 can coconut cream
1/2 cup coconut water
2 tablespoons agave syrup
1 vanilla bean
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon lime juice

Chop the strawberries and set aside.

Put the remaining ingredients, along with a large handful of your strawberries into the blender, and blend it all up. Pour the mixture into a bowl and add the rest of your berries. Get out a smasher and do a little bit of smashing so the strawberry mash gets all mixed into your coconut cream mixture. Pour into your ice-cream maker and follow the manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer to a freezer-proof container, cover and freeze until firm.

If you don’t have an ice cream maker, you can do what Tracy did (and what I did) and skip the ice cream maker step. Transfer mixture to a shallow freezer-proof dish and place in the freezer until it just starts to harden around the edges (about 30 minutes). Stir with a fork to break up any ice crystals, then freeze and repeat process until ice cream is firm. It takes longer, but if you don't have an ice cream maker, you do what you gotta do.