Make Raw Vanilla Ice Cream

Rene and I recently bought an ice cream maker, and we’ve been so excited about it.  Part of the reason we bought the machine was so we can determine exactly what goes into the ice cream we eat, but also so we can make pastured raw ice cream, which isn’t just really good tasting, but also super nutritious for you.  Unfortunately, I don’t know of anyone who sells raw ice cream, so this is the only way I know of that allows me to eat raw ice cream.

My new ice cream maker

In the future, we want to try to make ice cream without very much sugar/sweetener, or maybe with no sweetener at all, but for my first recipe, I wanted to try someone else’s tried and true recipe so I can gauge how the ice cream maker works, and where to make adjustments from there.  I grabbed some fresh raw cream from the farmer’s market and a real food ice cream recipe from GNOWFGLINS and quickly got started. (Note: I omitted eggs from my first batch since Rene is currently not eating eggs at the moment.)

First, I started with some sucanat, a more nutrient dense sweetener.  I imagine this is what sugar used to be like before they refined it to the white stuff that’s commonly used these days.  Sucanat stands for sugar cane natural, and I’ve been told that if you do decide to eat sugar, this is one of the few options you should choose because it still has a lot of the vitamins and minerals that sugar cane has.

Sucanat in Vitamix

Because the sucanat is a bit large and coarse, I use my handy Vitamix to grind it into a finer consistency.  You can’t see here, but when I finished grinding and opened up my Vitamix, a huge cloud of super fine sucanat came out to hug my face.  I was a bit startled at first, but it didn’t seem to do much harm.  Next time, I’m going to be more careful about sticking my face into my Vitamix after grinding sugar.

Finer Sucanat After Blending in Vitamix

Next, I added the fresh raw cream I just picked up at my local farmer’s market.  Mmmmm…..

Add Raw Cream to Sucanat

And finally a bit of vanilla extract.

Add Vanilla Extract

Then I blended everything together with the Vitamix.  It started to smell pretty good, yum!

Blended Sucanat, Raw Cream and Vanilla Extract

I had previously frozen the bowl component to my ice cream maker so it was all ready to go.

Empty Ice Cream Maker

I turned on my machine and poured in the raw cream, sucanat and vanilla extract mixture.

Ice Cream Making in Action Part 1

Wooo! Look at it go!

Ice Cream Making in Action Part 2

Ice Cream Making in Action Part 3

And after 25 minutes or so, I had fresh made soft serve vanilla ice cream!

Soft Serve Vanilla Ice Cream

It was SOOOO DELICIOUS!  I dare say it was only second best to the most delicious ice cream I’ve ever had in my life: authentic gelato in Italy!  Not too shabby for ice cream here in the states.  I was really tempted to eat this ice cream as it was, but I also wanted to know what it would be like fully frozen and not soft serve style, so I put it in the freezer for 2 hours.

Ice Cream in ready to freeze container

It was really hard to resist eating the ice cream for 2 hours after having a quick taste of it, but I resisted and here’s the finished ice cream!

After Freezing, Ice Cream is all ready to eat!

And of course, Rene and I dug right in!  I don’t know that I’ll ever go back to store bought ice cream ever again.  Not when this stuff is way cheaper, and so much more nutritious for me!

Yummy Pastured Raw Vanilla Ice Cream

I can’t wait to make another batch.  I’ll probably try the chocolate version next.  I’m also interested to see what happens if I make a raw cream and raw milk mixture rather than a full on raw cream mix like I did this time.  Oh, and there are endless possibilities of add ins and all that yummy stuff.  I can’t wait!

I absolutely love how easy making ice cream is with my new ice cream maker and my trusty Vitamix.  For more Vitamix recipes click here.

What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?  Mine is vanilla, and boy was this one superb!  Does anyone else out there make their own ice cream at home?  What’s your best recipe?