If you’re looking for healthy, vegan homemade ice cream that’s bursting with tropical flavors, you’ve come to the right place. Today we’re making Coconut Jackfruit Ice Cream from scratch, using no sugar, no cream, and not even an ice cream maker. Sound exciting? Let’s do it!
Coconut milk ice cream is one of Southeast Asia’s most popular ice cream flavors, while ripe yellow jackfruit is a hyper-aromatic tropical fruit often used in Asian sweets and desserts.
In this recipe we decided to combine the two into a wonderfully exotic ice cream!
And the genius thing about using coconut milk and jackfruit in ice cream is that you basically don’t need any other ingredient.
Why?
Traditional ice cream relies on high-fat cream and whole milk for creaminess and lots of sugar for sweetness.
But since coconut milk is naturally creamy and jackfruit already tastes very sweet, you don’t need to use whipped cream or refined sugar to make the ice cream silky and delicious.
That means you’ll also have super healthy homemade ice cream that’s dairy-free, sugar-free, and vegan. And incredibly good too!
How do you use jackfruit in ice cream?
While you can just mix and match most fruits to your ice cream base, jackfruit is a little different.
First, make sure you buy ripe yellow jackfruitnot the young green fruit used for vegan mock meat.
Ripe jackfruit pods look bright yellow; they are sweet and tasty. Jackfruit tastes like an amazing cross between mangoes, bananas, and pineapples. It’s really unique!
You can find yellow jackfruit fresh, frozen, or canned at your local Asian grocery store, in major supermarkets, or online.
Since jackfruit pulp is very dense and fibrous, it does not blend smoothly. So it requires a little extra preparation before you can use it for ice cream.
What you need to do is boil the chopped fruit in some water before pureeing it until smooth. It’s pretty much like making jam!
In fact, we used our homemade jackfruit jam as a base and added this jackfruit puree to canned coconut milk to make the ice cream mix. Simply!
Once the ice cream base is ready, you can either add it to your ice cream maker or follow our simple trick to hand stir the jackfruit ice cream.
It’s super easy to do! It just takes longer than using a machine, so make sure you make this recipe when you know you’ll be home all day, like the weekend.
But your patience will be rewarded! This ice cream is absolutely delicious. You will love the rich and nutty flavor of coconut combined with the intense tropical flavor of jackfruit.
And now that you know how to make ice cream without a machine, the sky’s the limit! Next, you can try our Salted Caramel Coconut Ice Cream or Lavender Blueberry Ice Cream recipes!
And you can use the leftover jackfruit puree to make a spongy jackfruit loafcake or simply eat it with oatmeal or toast. Yummy!