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My husband loves this flavour, and I have to admit it is my favourite too – especially paired with a rhubarb and apple crumble! It is creamy, delicious, not in the slightest bit icy, and full of salty goodness. It contains premium ingredients that are used in commercial vegan ice creams, and these give it a taste, texture, and melting point to rival any store bought ice cream (dairy or not!). I have given this to vegans and non-vegans and everyone has loved it. It is great in a sundae or in a homemade gluten free ice cream cone.

Making vegan ice cream that’s creamy, scoopable, and stable needs careful balancing of the ingredients, because each plays a specific role. Sugar controls (obviously!) sweetness and melting point. Dextrose lowers the relative sweetness and depresses freezing point more, which helps to keep the ice cream soft. Maltodextrin adds body and a smooth mouthfeel without adding sweetness, and it reduces iciness. The fats give that creamy mouthfeel, and the emulsifiers keep the mix of fats and liquid stable. The gums prevent ice crystals, improve scoopability, extend shelf-life, and help to give the ice cream body, and the silk gel also improves texture and mouthfeel. You can substitute some ingredients out (for instance you could try coconut oil instead of the cocoa butter and sunflower oil), but results wouldn’t be guaranteed.

It does take a bit of organisation, therefore, to get the ingredients together, but it is pretty much foolproof. We have an ice cream maker with a compressor like this one, because we aren’t quite organised to make sure we have a bowl frozen when we need it (there’s lots of ADHD. ADD, and autism going on in this household!). But these recipes would work with a household ice cream maker.

In order to get the measurements correct I recommend using a scientific scale such as this for the gums and emulsifiers. They are inexpensive and avoid you a) wasting money on gums that are used up too quickly, and b) having too much gum in the mix which can impact the mouthfeel of the ice cream by making it, well, gummy! We also recommend storing it in these tubs as they fit one batch of mix in perfectly, and they are long and thin which is good news when you are scooping the ice cream out (by the way, this is our favourite scoop as it is very heavy duty and easy to heat up in a cup of hot water to make scooping that bit easier!). You will also need a thermometer whether it is a candy thermometer, a digital probe thermometer, or an infa-red thermometer such as this one.

We are all in the UK, and get our additives from Amazon or directly from Speciality Ingredients online. UK links are here:

• Guar Gum
• Locust Bean Gum
• Silk Gel (E471)
• Sunflower lecithin
• Sucrose ester

Recipe Steps:

1. Prepare your caramel sauce: In a small saucepan melt vegan butter with coconut sugar over a medium heat until it begins to thicken and looks glossy. Stir continuously during this step.
2. Meanwhile, warm the coconut milk gently in the microwave at 30 second bursts, you want it hot button boiling. This helps to emulsify the with the sugar mixture without seizing it.
3. Cook the sugar mixture until it smells like toffee but be careful not to go over 160 degrees celsius as coconut sugar can burn easily.
4. Turn the heat to low. Slowly add the coconut milk to the sugar mixture while whisking continuously.
5. Take off the heat and when the bubbling subsides add the salt and the vanilla essence. Leave to cool fully. You can refrigerate but it will stiffen up in the fridge so it will need to be gently warmed to loosen before swirling into the ice cream.
6. Get all of your wet ingredients (soy milk, cocoa butter, and sunflower oil) in the pan melting at a low heat.
7. Weigh out your sugar, dextrose and maltodextrin on your main kitchen scales. Measure out the guar gum, locust bean gum, sunflower lecithin, sucrose ester, silk gel (if using) and salt. Whisk all the dry ingredients together.
8. Add them to the warmed wet mixture and whisk.
9. Heat up until it reaches 85 degrees celsius (185 fahrenheit). Blend with a stick blender and leave to cool. Whisk in the flavouring.
10. Refrigerate to allow the gums to fully hydrate, preferably overnight.
11. Churn the ice cream
12. Spoon a layer of ice cream on the bottom of the tub, drizzle over salted caramel mixture and use a spoon to gently swirl the mix. Repeat until there is no more ice cream or caramel. Don’t over mix because you want to keep them swirled and not blended.. Spoon into an ice cream container and freeze for several hours to fully harden up.
13. Serve and enjoy!!!

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Please comment if you try the recipe, I would love to connect and see how it went, and if you would like to see other flavours of ice cream then comment below.