Vegan white sapote ice cream and an insight into my way of cooking

In addition to my previous post, here’s a recipe for vegan white sapote ice cream. And it’s a great opportunity to get a peek into my kitchen and learn how I cook.

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For me, cooking is all about being creative, getting out of your head after a long day and creating something, something you can eat.

It started out with following recipes to the letter, but over time I became more loose and learned how to adjust them to my taste by leaving out ingredients, adding some. Until I reached the point that I couldn’t even follow them. Now they’re merely ideas.

For that to happen, you need to understand how recipes work. How you cook. And for me, I realized I like to know the basic rules, the guidelines, the ‘why’s of cooking. What’s needed to cook that dish.

And every time I dive into unknown territory, I do exactly that: explore what the rules are, what’s needed and why.

I compare recipes. I look up background information of the dish and its ingredients. If available, I dive a bit into the science behind the cooking techniques. All to learn the real basics of a dish.

[Well, most of the time that is. Sometimes I stubbornly skip this step and fail hopelessly.]

So when I got my ice cream maker for my birthday last month, I plunged into the ice cream making do’s and don’ts and quickly learned you need 4 basic components: sugar, fat (usually heavy cream), chilling and churning.

With the abundance of white sapotes my tree is growing, I dove straight into making white sapote ice cream. White sapotes are a great fruit to make ice cream, as their natural texture almost resembles soft serve when you blitz it up in a blender. You just need to add sugar and fat, then chill and churn, right? Yup! Here’s my asy 3-ingredients only recipe for white sapote ice cream.

The next step was to try to make it vegan.

The difference between regular and vegan ice cream, obviously, is in the heavy cream. When you know that heavy cream consists of 30% fat, you know what you’re looking for in a plant-based fat. A quick look online taught me that coconut cream is one of the ways to go in most vegan home kitchens. So I grabbed a can from my cabinet and chilled it in my fridge. For extra fatness, I added a bit of coconut oil to my recipe too.

And it worked! I nailed it in my first try to make vegan white sapote ice cream.

So check out that vegan white sapote ice cream recipe below. It’s good. It’s real ice cream. I might even say that it’s even better than the one I made with sweetened condensed milk. Lighter. Smoother. But you have to be okay with the coconut taste.

Recipe Vegan White Sapote Ice Cream - white sapote - illustration and recipe by edie eats food blog by edith dourleijn

Vegan white sapote ice cream

The hardest part of this recipe is finding white sapotes, as you hardly can buy them in a supermarket. You can ask around at your farmers market here in SoCal, or check the app CropSwap. I have my white sapotes on it! đŸ˜‰

I used:
1/2 can coconut milk/cream (18% fat, can of 14 oz | 400 gr)
2 lb | 900 gr sapote pulp
1 1/2 T coconut oil
1/2 cup | 100 gr sugar

Note: there are two versions of coconut milk available. Check the label, you’ll need the one that has 18% fat, not the one with 4% fat.

I did:
Prepare your gear. Put a large, deep metal bowl in your freezer. Put the can with coconut cream in your fridge.
Prep the white sapotes. Peel the fruits and squeeze them between your fingers. Pick out all the pits. Transfer to the now cold metal bowl and put back in the freezer for 30 minutes or until the sapote pulp is cold. No need to freeze it over.

Tip: The white sapotes have multiple pits, usually about 5, but it can be less or more. Some are full-grown and as large as an almond that’s still in it’s skin, other are as small as an almond sliver. Especially when your using an (immersion/stick) blender, you want to have all pits removed not to bite on small hard pieces that were broken up in the process. Another reason is that the seeds supposedly are poisonous.

Mix all ingredients until smooth using an electric mixer/blender (see above). Make sure all is well combined and light in texture.

To make the vegan white sapote ice cream without an ice cream maker:

Freeze the mixture.
Mix again, after 15-20 minutes. Using a fork or spatula, scrape off the already freezing sides of the bowl first and mix into the rest of the sapote pulp. Then use your hand mixer to mix some more air into the mixture.
Repeat this for at least 2-3 hours, or until the sapote ice cream has a the consistency of thick soft serve.
Then freeze the white sapote ice cream for a few hours to firm up. Or eat some and freeze the rest. It’s up to you!

To make the vegan white sapote ice cream with an ice cream maker:

Churn. Transfer the cold mixture to your ice cream maker and let it churn for 40 minute, or until the vegan white sapote ice cream has a the consistency of thick soft serve.
Note: It might be that not all of the mixture will fit in your ice cream maker. You can chill and churn the remaining manually as described above.
Then freeze the white sapote ice cream for a few hours to firm up. Or eat some and freeze the rest. It’s up to you!

Enjoy!
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3 Replies to “Vegan white sapote ice cream and an insight into my way of cooking

  1. I m so excited to try this recipe tonight. I love all ice creams but have been on a coconut-milk kick for a while and am sick of pay at least $7 for a tiny container! I plan to add toasted coconut flakes, chopped almonds, probably some chocolate chunks. When is the best time to add those? Thanks so much!

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