Garden Mint Cookie Crumble Ice Cream
This home-grown mint cookie crumble ice cream isn’t dyed green, but it is filled with real fresh minty flavor. Chocolate and mint are a great combination, and this ice cream has both! It just uses a few simple ingredients and is relatively healthy (for a dessert). You don’t need an ice cream maker, and you don’t need to churn. And with summer coming, homemade ice cream is the perfect way to celebrate summer and save a few dollars while you’re at it.
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Better than Mint Chocolate Chip
Before I was vegan, I spent some time when I was growing up in New York state, where we are blessed with a chain of gas station convenience stores called Stewart’s. Usually said as if it contains only one syllable, like “sterts”. What Stewarts is great at is making their own delicious goodies- ice cream, sodas, chips, coffee, and more, which they sell at very reasonable prices. Most if not all Stewarts shops even have a little scoop shop in them, where you can get a cone or milkshake or whatever else. They even have a couple vegan flavors, one of which is mint cookie crumble! And here’s the thing- mint chocolate chip is good, but mint cookie crumble is so much better. Instead of cold slivers of hard chocolate, you get soft and crumbly chocolatey chunks, which gives a much better textural experience in my opinion. The cookie crumbles give just that perfect amount of variation between the chocolatey chunks and the cool minty cream. But alas, I no longer live near a Stewarts, so their vegan mint cookie crumble ice cream isn’t available to me. So I had to make my own. Additionally, I thought I might take it up a level, by using fresh mint straight from the garden. It gives the ice cream a nicer flavor that’s less harsh than a mint extract. You can almost taste the sunshine warming up the cooling little mint leaves. It’s simultaneously gentle and refreshing. I found that by using fresh mint, this ice cream didn’t give any of those “toothpaste” vibes that minty desserts sometimes can.
Looking for Mint Recipes? Try one of these!
- Quick Japanese Knotweed Jam with Mint
- Rhubarb Mint Salad
- Minted Cauliflower and Pea Shoot Salad
- Cucumber and Jicama Vegan Tea Sandwiches
- Mini Strawberry, Rhubarb and Wintergreen Berry Tarts
- Mayo-Free Radish Mint Pasta Salad
- TVP Vegan Larb: A Delicious Laotian Salad
The Secret of No-Churn, Low-Fat Vegan Ice Cream- Aquafaba
I love food and cooking and kitchen gadgets, but I do not like having to buy a tool that only has one purpose. There’s only so much room on my shelves and counters, and if I can’t use something for multiple purposes, it usually doesn’t make the cut. So as much as I’d love to churn up batches of delicious vegan ice cream, I can’t bring myself to by an ice cream machine. As far as I know it has pretty much one use, and is fairly seasonal. That’s why I absolutely love hacks like this no-churn ice cream using aquafaba. With just a stand mixer (which I have), we can get silky, delicate ice cream. The trick, which the title of this paragraph might have given away, is aquafaba. Aquafaba is the liquid the comes from rehydrating beans, usually chickpeas. I like to use the stuff you find in a can, because it’s thick and consistent. Homemade stuff can be a little less reliable, and usually needs to be reduced. Aquafaba has the ability to be whipped up like egg whites into glossy, airy peaks. When frozen, those fluffy peaks give you a similar texture to ice cream- easy to scoop, and melt in your mouth creamy. Now frozen aquafaba on it’s own probably wouldn’t taste great, so we can add sugar and different flavors to replicate your favorite scoops. The key is to gently fold your add-ins to the whipped aquafaba, so you don’t overly deflate your dessert.
The other kind of crazy thing about aquafaba ice cream is it’s very low in fat. Aquafaba itself contains no fat, and very few calories. The reason aquafaba whips up well is that it contains starches from beans, which holds onto air when whipped. Another factor that keeps this ice cream low fat is that while sugar and acid can help to stabilize the aquafaba, fats will cause it to deflate. The more fat is added to your aquafaba ice cream, the more likely it is to not work. For example, this mint cookie crumble deflated the aquafaba a little more than our previous blueberry ice cream, but not as much as it would if we added cocoa powder to the mix.
How to Make Vegan Mint Cookie Crumble Ice Cream
This vegan ice cream all starts with mint- fresh, beautiful mint. Pick some from your garden if you have it, if not you can get a nice bunch at the supermarket or a farm stand. To infuse the minty flavor into our ice cream, we made a “tea” by soaking the mint in warmed soymilk. After letting that cool to maximize our flavor transfer, blend the two together and strain out all the bits of mint. You could leave them in if you wanted, but your ice cream will be smoother without them. Once you have your minty milk tea, it’s time to move on to the aquafaba. A stand mixer is a really good idea here. Since aquafaba takes up to 10 minutes to whip up, your arms will get pretty tired if you’re using a hand mixer, and it’s going to be just about impossible to get there if you use a whisk. Set the aquafaba up in your mixer, turn it on high and walk away. While you’re waiting you can remove the creamy center from your chocolate sandwich cookies (generic talk for Oreos), and discard or munch on them. Gently crush the chocolate cookies into pieces- not dust, but pieces. Add the sugar and vanilla to the aquafaba, and get it to a silky texture. Then gently fold in the minty milk and the cookie pieces into the aquafaba. This is the trickiest part if you haven’t mastered the folding yet- it’s basically the process of scraping the sides of the bowl and lifting it up, then folding it over and repeating until it’s fairly uniform. If you just mix, you’ll quickly knock all the air out of the ice cream mixture, and end up making sweetened ice. The final step is just to move it to the freezer, and have patience- I let mine sit at least overnight before eating. Happy summer- enjoy!
Garden Mint Cookie Crumble Ice Cream
Ingredients
- 2 cups fresh mint, gently packed
- ½ cup soymilk (oat milk also works well, but has more of a flavor)
- 1 can of chickpeas (liquid only)
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ½ tsp. vanilla extract
- 10 store-bought chocolate sandwich cookies
Instructions
- Heat the soymilk in a small saucepan until it starts to steam. Take off the heat, and add the mint, and press the leaves down so as much of them as possible are submerged in the liquid. Let steep until it has reached room temperature, then add the milk and mint to a blender and blend well. Use a cheese cloth or a fine metal strainer to remove and discard the pieces of mint, and reserve the minty liquid.
- Drain the chickpeas, reserving the liquid. Use the chickpeas in another recipe, and add the liquid to a stand mixer. Use a balloon whisk to beat on high, until stiff peaks have formed- this will take several minutes. Add the sugar and vanilla, and whisk for a while longer until it is smooth and no longer grainy.
- While the aquafaba whips, remove the centers from the sandwich cookies. Put the chocolate shells in a sandwich bag, and use a rolling pin to lightly smash. You don’t want to totally crush the cookies, just break them into smaller pieces.
- Once the aquafaba and sugar have integrated, take the bowl out of the stand mixer. Use a silicone spatula to gently fold the minty tea and the cookie pieces into the aquafaba, being careful to keep as much air in the aquafaba as possible. Transfer the mixture to a container, and move it to the freezer overnight to set.
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