Dairy-free Strawberry and Almond Crumble Ice-Cream

Dairy-free, Soya-free

Serves: 8 people

Calories per serving: 324

 



So, ice-cream. I'd never made ice-cream before. Not even full dairy stuff. It's just never seemed worth the trouble. But as part of my adventures in dairy-free baking I figured, what the hell. Also, I'd just bought a huge quantity of delicious strawberries on the market (those traders and their irresistible deals!) and needed a way to use them up. So I thought, what goes well with strawberries? Almonds! And I had a lot of almonds in the pantry that needed eating. Great! I found some recipes and off I went, experimenting.

Credit for the basic dairy-free strawberry ice-cream recipe has to go to Angela's Kitchen. I had no idea where to start on this one and basically used this recipe with a few less strawberries. But the almond crumble recipe is one I heavily adapted from a Nigella Lawson almond crumble.

I don't have an ice-cream maker so the actual freezing and whipping took a long time. If you have a maker, great. If not, this will work, it just takes a long time.

So onto the recipe. And I should just add that this is delicious! I wasn't expecting it to be that nice, no dairy and all. But I was really pleasantly surprised (as were my friends). It tastes like a very creamy frozen yoghurt. It's lush!

Ingredients:

Crumble:

• 150g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 75g non-dairy, non-soya spread (diced)
• 90g flaked almonds
• 75g soft light brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Ice-cream:

• 75g caster sugar
• 370ml almond milk
• 2 eggs
• 400g strawberries (diced)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 120ml full-fat coconut milk

Method:

Ice-cream

• Beat the sugar and eggs together in a mixing bowl using an electric whisk until they have thickened and turned pale.
• Place the almond milk in a saucepan and heat over a medium heat until just simmering. Keep the electric whisk going and whisk the almond milk into the egg mixture. Then place the contents back into the saucepan and put over a low heat. Stir constantly with a whisk until the mixture thickens. (This takes a LONG time. I was amazed how long. I think it took about 40 minutes. DO NOT BOIL!). Eventually it will resemble double cream. Then you can stop.

• Remove from the heat and pass through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl. Allow to cool.
• Place the strawberries into a blender with the coconut milk and vanilla extract. Blend until smooth. Add to the previous mix and stir. Cover the bowl and place in the refrigerator until cold.
• Once cool, place in the freezer and make the crumble.

Crumble:

• Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas Mark 6.
• Place the flour and baking powder into a large mixing bowl and rub in the spread using your fingers. It should resemble rough breadcrumbs.
• Stir in the flaked almonds, salt, cinnamon and brown sugar. Add the almond extract. Mix.
• Place the crumble mix into a ceramic dish. Grab small amounts and squeeze them together to make some chunks. (You'll want a mix of loose crumbs and big chunks).
• Bake the crumble mix until it is golden.
• Leave to cool.

Ice-cream:

• Once the ice-cream has been in the freezer for 30 minutes, take it out and beat it with an electric whisk until smooth again. (Make sure to get any ice-crystals mixed in that have started to form around the edge). Then put back in the freezer. You'll need to repeat this process every 30 minutes until the ice-cream is frozen to the consistency of soft-scoop ice-cream. (Mine took about 5 hours).

• Add the crumble mix to the ice-cream once it's at the above stated consistency and stir through (I found there was too much crumble and had some left over). Place back in the freezer and leave it there until you're ready to eat it.