Natural Sugar-Free Dairy-Free Vegan Ice Cream

Introduction

This page documents the results of a series of experiments I conducted in an attempt to create an ice cream conforming to the following criteria:

• Smooth and creamy, not crystalline.
• Sweetened with stevia and other natural sweeteners having a low glycemic index. No artificial sweeteners like aspartame or sucralose. Sucralose (Splenda) is far from "natural" and may even be toxic (click on the link for more info).
• No animal products (vegan); that is, no dairy, no gelatin, no eggs. I am not vegan; however this is the challenge I set for myself.
• No bananas (they happen to make me gag for some reason).

I haven't yet succeeded with the first criterion, but I have come close, achieving the consistency of a sorbet that can still be cut with a spoon after sitting in the freezer overnight. This is a work in progress; the information on this page will change every few weeks as I refine the recipe and learn more.

You can read these threads on Google Groups about my prior failures to create an ice cream conforming to the above criteria.

• Thread 1
• Thread 2

The inspiration

What inspired this was a product called "Tofutti" which was creamy and delicious, indistinguishable from ice cream, and used no dairy products and negligible sugar. I wish I knew what proportions of ingredients Tofutti uses. The ingredients are:

Vanilla ice cream part: Water, corn oil, maltodextrin^*, sorbitol^*, polydextrose^*, cocoa processed with alkali, soy protein, tofu, cocoa butter, mono and diglycerides, cellulose gum, carrageenan, vanilla with other natural flavors, aspartame, salt.
 
Chocolate ice cream center: Water, corn oil, sorbitol^*, polydextrose^*, isolated soy protein, tofu, cocoa butter, dextrose, cocoa processed with alkali, caramel color, salt, locust bean gum, carageenan, vanillin.
 
^*Adds a negligible amount of sugar.

As you can see above, the basic ingredients are water, oil, sweeteners, soy, and smoothing agents or stabilizers. So I set out to duplicate it with simpler ingredients. I have not succeeded yet.

The basic recipe (so far)

See the next section for explanation of the ingredient list. I found all of these ingredients at Whole Foods Market, a nationwide chain of natural-food stores.

Combine the following ingredients in a blender in the order shown.

2 cups water-based ingredients
1/2 cup oils
1/2 cup soy lecithin granules
1/2 teaspoon stevia powder
2 fl oz vegetable glycerin
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 to 1 teaspoon xanthan gum (must be the last ingredient added, while blender is running)

For chocolate flavor, include the following:

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon stevia
1/4 teaspoon peppermint oil

The liquid ingredients should have come out of the refrigerator so they should already be chilled. Mix all ingredients in a blender, in the order listed above, pour into an ice cream maker, and run it until done. I use a Salton Ice Cream Machine - a wonderful little device that is no longer manufactured but can be found on eBay. It requires no ice and no cannister to prefreeze, and very little space to store. You put the whole unit in the freezer with the power cord trailing out the door seal. It runs for an hour or so and stops automatically. One cannot put more than 24 oz of mix into the unit, so it's great for small experimental quantities.

Lessons learned

• The more watery ingredients one has relative to oil ingredients, the more crystalline will be the end product. Leaving a gritty crystalline product in the freezer overnight will result in a rock-hard substance.
• Dairy cream is a colloid (a suspension that doesn't separate) having butterfat mixed with water, basically. The butterfat content prevents the ice cream from getting too crystalline. For vegan ice cream we have to add vegetable oil to the mix. However, oil and water don't mix. Fortunately, soy lecithin granules dissolved in the mix serve as an excellent emulsifier to keep the oil in suspension without separating. Initially I used one part lecithin granules to one part oil. This works fine, but one doesn't need that much lecithin. As little as 2% lecithin by volume is sufficient to emulsify the oil. However, lecithin is mostly fat (albeit water soluble), so extra lecithin won't hurt the ice cream, and it's good for the diet anyway.
• The concentrated stevia powder one buys says on the jar that 1/3 teaspoon of stevia powder is equivalent in sweetness to 1 cup of sugar. In my judgment this isn't quite true. I find that 1/2 teaspoon stevia powder comes closer te the sweetness of 1 C sugar.
• Stevia liquid comes in different concentrations and often the label doesn't tell you equivalences. I never know what I'm getting with liquid, so I buy the powder.
• Even when assuming 1/2 tsp stevia = 1 C sugar, cold temperatures will reduce the apparent sweetening power of stevia. If the mix tastes fine before freezing, it will taste less sweet when frozen. If you added cocoa to the mix, the bitterness of the cocoa will become more apparent after freezing. A good rule is: sweeten to taste before freezing, then add 25% more stevia.
• If you want chocolate ice cream, add cocoa powder to the recipe. However you must add even more sweetener to offset the bitterness of the cocoa powder.
• Peppermint oil improves the flavor of chocolate ice cream but if you add too much, the end product has an almost painfully cold mouth feel to it.
• Mixing sweeteners has a synergistic effect resulting in better quality sweetness. Stevia's sweetness occurs more in the aftertaste. Glycerine has more of a foretaste sweetness. However glycerine is expensive so I can get used to a more stevia-heavy sweetness.
• Good ice cream contains a significant amount of air. Without a thickening agent such as gelatin or a gum, air won't be entrained into the mix and you'll end up with a too-hard product after freezing overnight.
• Xanthan gum is wonderful stuff for thickening, better than anything else I have found, because it doesn't require heating, mixes without clumping, and a little goes a long way. It can easily become nasty stuff, though: Just one tablespoon in the recipe above will turn the unfrozen mix into a pudding, and one spoonful of the end-product ice cream will make you feel like you swallowed a wad of chewing gum! I don't know that it qualifies as "vegan" because it is produced by fermentation of a bacteria culture, and I don't know if vegans regard bacteria as "animals" that are off-limits.

The ingredients

Here are the possible ingredients that one can use.

Water-based ingredients (single or combinations)

Almond milk

Soy milk - find one low in sugars; the lowest I have found is "VitaSoy Creamy Original" having 4g sugars, 9g total carbs per serving

Coconut milk [untried]

Silken tofu - use no more than 1/2 the volume of water-based ingredients

Soy cream [untried] - I hadn't heard of this until recently, and it apparently has good results when combined with tofu.
 

Oils (single or combinations, for making a smoother product)

Flax oil - the "best" oil in terms of health; should use it as at least part of the oils, but it's expensive. Avoid the high-lignan type due to its bitter taste. The regular clear flaxseed oil has a pleasant, light nutty taste. Its disadvantage is that it doesn't solidify at freezing temperatures.

Canola oil - This can also be a component, mixed with other oils. Unfortunately it doesn't freeze either.

Olive oil - combine with others; alone it may impart an odd flavor. Solidifies above 0°C.

Sesame oil - this oil solidifies above 0°C, which may be important -- after all, the butterfat in ice cream also solidifies above 0°C. It has a flavor that may lend itself well to ice cream, unlike olive oil.

Coconut oil - rock solid at room temperature; you have to chip off chunks of it with a knife. Contrary to popular wisdom of a decade ago, coconut oil actually has health benefits and has no linkage to heart disease or other ailments. A little bit of the molten oil added to the ingredients while the blender is running may impart a good structure to the ice cream. Its coconutty taste is very good for ice cream too. Not to be confused with cocoa butter, another room-temperature solid oil, but far less healthy.
 

Other smoothing/stabilizing agents

Soy lecithin granules - an emulsifier that enables oil and water to mix

Xanthan gum - seems like the simplest and best; soluble in cold and hot water, doesn't clump, and a little goes a long way (you can easily make the mix too thick if you're not careful). Used in some commercial low-carb ice creams. Supposed to work synergistically with locust bean gum, but seems fine by itself.

Locust (carob) bean gum [untried] - soluble only in hot water above 90°C; provides smooth meltdown, desirable texture and chewiness

Agar agar flakes [untried] - gelling agent - seems like 1 teaspoon per cup of water-based liquid might be a good amount; needs hot water like bean gum

Carageenan (Irish Moss) [untried] - gelling agent that seems troublesome according to this page at the Vegetarian Society web site)

Guar Gum [untried] - reputed to give a more velvety texture.

"Gelozone" [untried] - this looks like a good product combining the gelling qualities of guar gum, carob bean gum, and carageenan
 

Sweeteners

Stevia powder or liquid - I prefer powder because liquid versions have different concentrations. The powder is 300 times the sweetness of sugar.

Vegetable glycerin - sweetener having no glycemic response; use it if you can afford it, but don't use it alone or it will impart an odd flavor

Ki-Sweet [untried] - a low-glycemic non-stevia natural sweetener, 15 times the sweetness of sugar

SlimSweet [untried] - another low-glycemic non-stevia natural sweetener, 15 times the sweetness of sugar
 

Flavorings

Vanilla extract - good in any ice cream regardless of flavor

Peppermint oil - a small amount improves the taste of cocoa

Unsweetened cocoa powder - cocoa nib powder is even better

Resources

I've had many good suggestions from the inhabitants of the rec.food.cooking newsgroup, and got some ideas from the alt.food.vegan newsgroup. Thanks to MEow (Nikitta) in particular who provided the following links for investigation:

Vegan Frozen Desserts (vegan.about.com)
Non-dairy strawberry ice cream (veganchef.com)
Non-dairy vanilla ice cream (veganchef.com)
Peppermint chocolate chip frozen dessert (veganchef.com)
Fat free recipes (fatfree.com)

Unfortunately, none of these resources have a recipe that meets my criteria stated at the top of this document. Most rely on sugar or sugar sources such as fruits or fruit juice. Sugar dissolved in the mix seems to impart a quality conducive to making a good ice cream, but my objective is to avoid sugars. Some recipes won't give a creamy product like ice cream (and fatfree.com doesn't even try to call these ice creams, but rather sherbets or sorbets). And some rely on bananas. However, good ideas can still be gleaned from them.

Improve my recipe! Send suggestions to axlq@spamcop.net