Book Review: Dairy-Free Ice Cream by Kelly Brozyna

Dairy-Free Ice Cream by Kelly Brozyna of The Spunky Coconut shows you how to make your own dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, soy-free, and refined sugar-free ice cream at home so you can satisfy your cravings without falling off the wagon. It contains 75 recipes for all of your favorite frozen treats, from classic, coffee, and tea ice cream flavorss to popsicles, ice cream cakes, and toppings. The book also includes a history of allergen-free ice cream and tips for making perfect ice cream at home, including information on the various tools you’ll need to get the job done (most importantly, an ice cream maker!).

The book is gorgeous. The full-page photos will have your mouth watering with every turn of the page, and Kelly leaves no stone unturned. Vanilla and Chocolate? Check. Rocky Road and Butter Pecan? You betcha. You’ll also find dozens of more exotic flavors like Blueberry Lavender, White Chocolate Goji Berry, recipes for Ice Cream Sandwiches and Whoopie Pies, Ice Cream Cakes, Frozen Yogurt, Fruit-based Popsicles, Sorbet and Sherbet, and all of your favorite toppings like Chocolate Crackle, Marshmallow Fluff, Caramel Sauce, Whipped Coconut Cream, and Strawberry Compote. There’s a recipe index in the back with photographs, an index for searching by ingredient or recipe title, and resources to help you find some of the ingredients used in the book. Most are Paleo staples like almond milk, coconut milk (or make your own), gelatin, and arrowroot powder. Kelly provides you with everything you need to know to get started making your own delicious frozen treats.

So far, I’ve made the Fried Banana Ice Cream, Sunbutter Fudge Ripple Ice Cream, and Banana Kiwi Popsicles. The Fried Banana Ice Cream pairs fried bananas with a coconut-and-almond milk base for a sweet, somewhat tropical ice cream that I think would also be delicious with grilled pineapple. It has the rich, creamy texture of even the best store-bought ice cream and scoops beautifully after thawing a little. If you are looking for a summer treat to impress guests with, you can’t go wrong with this one.

The flavor of the Sunbutter Fudge Ripple Ice Cream was fantastically reminiscent of a peanut butter cup and the perfect salve for cravings. As you can see from the photo, I simply couldn’t get mine to swirl. The sunbutter ice cream was much too hard and cold to fold in the coconut oil-based chocolate ganache before it started to freeze, but if I added it before the ice cream hardened, it wound up completely mixed together (as pictured). As a result, it had a more firm texture, more like soft cookie dough than ice cream. Nobody complained. In fact, it was gone within a day. Gotta love a recipe that still works even when you screw it up!

The Banana Kiwi Popsicles are a simple fruit-based treat that’s quick to put together and perfect for kids of all ages. The Chocolate Crackle is absolutely perfect, hardening almost immediately on contact with the frozen fruit so you don’t wind up with a big mess or have to wait long for it to freeze in the freezer. I can’t think of a single fruit that doesn’t go well with chocolate. I’ve since made these with strawberries and pineapple, too. Yum!

All of the recipes’ instructions are clear and easy to follow. Most of the recipes use a base of nut milk and coconut milk. As a result, not many of them are autoimmune protocol-friendly. You could replace the nut milk with coconut milk. Alternatively, if you happen to have coconut allergies or simply don’t like the taste of coconut but do well with nuts, you could use more nut milk. Either way, you won’t get quite the same taste and texture of Kelly’s original recipes, but you will still wind up with a tasty treat. Recipes with dough like the ice cream cakes, cookies, and cookie bowls will be more difficult to adapt.

Dairy-Free Ice Cream is for anyone who misses the occasional indulgence but wants (or needs) to remain Paleo, dairy-free, or egg-free. It’s a particularly great book for parents of kids on restricted diets who may feel left out at parties or other occasions when their friends are eating ice cream, popsicles, or ice cream sandwiches. And with summer in full swing (here in the Northern hemisphere, anyway), this book came out just in time! You can order it on Amazon.