Super-Cheap Vegan Brown Sugar Chocolate Ice Cream

Sometimes when you lose, you win.

The 15-year-old girl has recently become a vegetarian, and is trying to stay away from dairy as well. Thus, she has taken to drinking rice milk, which I'm okay with, as long as we are making up what dairy offers in other ways. The problem with rice milk is that it is expensive, especially compared to having our Daisy milked every day, and it has strange ingredients like "natural flavors", which no one seems to know anything about.

So.... I decided we should try our hand at making rice milk from scratch. That night we had stir fry, and with the leftover rice, we made the attempt, and...

We did not like it, not one little bit. The texture was all wrong, the taste was bland, and basically, it was a big disappointment.

As we stood by the counter looking at the 5 quarts of unwanted product, I suggested that we try making ice cream out of it. The 15-year-old girl thought that that was a great idea, so I did, and it worked, and instead of losing, we won, because ice cream made with homemade rice milk is really, really cheap, and has about half the fat of Häagen-Dazs®.

I just need to warn you about one thing, though. Because of the low fat content of this ice cream, it sets up kind of hard. That can be remedied, however, using a number of techniques, such as leaving it out for a few minutes before eating it, putting it in the microwave for a few seconds, or initially spooning it into individual containers after taking it out of the machine.

Other than that little issue, this ice cream is really chocolate-y and really good. I just went and got a bowl of it and am eating it right now. Hope you love it, too.

Ingredients

1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup coconut oil
4 cups rice milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Melt the coconut oil by placing it in a glass and submersing the glass in warm water. Pour this, the sugar, and 1 cup of the rice milk into the blender and blend until the sugar dissolves, about 3 minutes.

2. Pour the remaining ingredients into the blender and blend until smooth.

3. Immediately pour mix into your ice cream maker. It will take longer than normal to freeze because you won't be chilling the mix. If the mix is placed into the refrigerator to chill, the coconut oil will float to the top and make the ice cream unpalatable.

Before serving, leave ice cream out at room temperature for a few minutes for easier scooping.