Indigo Ice Cream

As summer rolls around and the temperature starts to rise, what's better to cool you off than a nice bowl of ice cream? In this instructable, I will show you how to make Indigo Ice cream, a delicious blueberry-flavored frozen treat that is completely dairy free. The best part is that you won't even know it is!

Let's get into it!

Here all are the ingredients that you will need:

1 1/2 cups of blueberries (fresh or frozen)

1 can of coconut milk

1/4 to 1/2 cups of granulated sugar

4 bags of blueberry tea

1 tbsp of vanilla extract

2 tbsp of vegetable oil

1/4 tsp of guar gum (optional, for softness)

natural blue food color (optional, if needed)

to start off, grab a small saucepan and measure out your blueberries. Pour them into the saucepan along with 1 tbsp of water. Turn the heat on to medium-high and let the blueberries slowly break down and the juices release. you can even smash the blueberries to release even more. The more liquid, the stronger the flavor in the ice cream will be. Once most of the liquid is extracted out of the berries, (around 10 min) transfer the blueberries into a strainer. Using the back of a spoon, press all of the liquid out of the berries. When finished, you should have around 1/2 cups of "blueberry juice".

Let's start the ice cream base!

Now that we finished preparing the blueberries, we can begin making the ice cream base.

To start, pour one can of coconut milk into a saucepan followed by your sugar. I choose to use coconut milk when making the recipe because it tasted just as good and was dairy free. Allow the sugar and coconut milk to simmer on medium heat for around 5 minutes or until the sugar is mostly dissolved. Pour in the blueberry "juice" and vanilla extract. Stir until fully incorporated.

To add even more flavor to our ice cream, we are going to use tea. Tea is super easy to add and is also super easy to find in your local supermarket. As another pro, it adds a natural flavor as supposed to extracts or flavorings. I added four teabags into the base, but you can add even more if you want. Let the tea steep in the liquid as it is simmering. Once the tea is fully steeped, take the bags out and stir in your vanilla extract and natural food color if desired. You may notice small chunks of coconut milk/fat but we are going to blend the ice cream to make it creamy and smooth. Pour the mixture into your blender container or a large bowl (if you are using a stick blender). Add your oil and guar gum. The oil and the guar gum help keep the ice cream scoopable and soft even when fully frozen. Beld the mixture until smooth.

( the ice cream may look pinker here because of the bright lights)

Now that our ice cream mixture is complete, we are ready to churn. If you don't own an ice cream machine, you can freeze the mixture as is, but churning gives a creamier texture and makes it easier to scoop once fully frozen. Prepare your ice cream machine by either freezing the inner compartment or adding ice (depends on the type of machine). our the ice cream mixture in and let the ice cream churn. Look at the second picture to see how it should look. When it has reached this consistency, feel free to mix in chocolate chips or any other type of topping. From here transfer the ice cream into a container. Freeze for a few hours or until scoopable.

We are done! Scoop the ice cream into a bowl or cone and serve with fresh fruit or berries.

Thanks for reading until this point!

If you enjoyed, feel free to post a comment or picture!

Enjoy!

Nathan