Making homemade, dairy-free ice cream

For those of you who do not have a high powered blender like a Vitamix, and want to make dairy free ice cream, I found an easy way. It does require an immersion/stick blender, which can be purchased at Amazon and other places for under $15.... I found mine at Goodwill for $2. Garage sales are a great place to find them as well. For making easy ice cream, take frozen fruit (I have used bananas, mangos, strawberries, etc.) and place it the fruit in a ziplock type bag. Pound the fruit with a hammer (I used the flat side of a meat tenderizer) until flattened. Place in a tall bowl (so it doesn't splatter out). Add some milk, and blend with the stick blender until creamy. Add more milk as needed to get to desired consistency. Sweeten with stevia or your favorite sweetener. This will also work for frozen milk cubes, like the mint chip ice cream recipe from St. Patricks Day that I posted. Just put the frozen cubes in a bag and pound them, and use the stick blender to blend. For vanilla ice cream, freeze dairy free milk in ice cube trays. When cubes are frozen, pop out of tray and store in ziplocks in the freezer. When you are ready to make the vanilla ice cream, add vanilla and sweetener after smashing cubes and blending with stick blender. From what I have read, store-bought almond milk isn't supposed to be frozen (I'm not sure why). I haven't tried it to see how it would work. I used homemade almond milk or coconut milk for these recipes.

Dairy-Free Mint Chip Ice Cream

One of my favorite ice cream's growing up was Mint Chocolate Chip. I can't tell you the last time I ate the real version because of the dairy, sugar and food coloring. I did make a healthy dairy-free

3 cups coconut milk (or another non-dairy milk)
1/2 cup fresh spinach -- I actually use...d mixed greens and took all the red and purple pieces out. You can also use 1/8 cup frozen spinach. You can't taste the spinach or greens, it is just for color.
2-3 drops food grade peppermint oil (I used Young Living)
Stevia to taste (or whatever sweetener you prefer)
Chocolate chips (I used homemade chocolate and broke it up into pieces)

Blend the milk, spinach, peppermint oil and sweetener in a blender until smooth. Pour into ice cube trays or a shallow container. Freeze. Once frozen, pop the frozen milk cubes out and put them in a blender. I used a Vitamix for this, so if you use a regular blender or food processor, you may have to let the cubes thaw a bit. Blend until smooth, then mix in the chocolate pieces.

By the way...the picture of the finished product is not mine. It wasn't until we gobbled it up that I realized I should have taken a picture . It looked very similar to the picture.