Vegan Chocolate Ice Cream (Mocha & Nutella)
Skip your stop at the ice cream shop and grab your waffle cones, because today we are making a Vegan Chocolate Ice Cream recipe, with mocha and Nutella flavors! Did someone say the words Nutella and vegan ice cream in the same sentence? I’m dropping to the floor in an excited faint. Nutella was my FAVORITE growing up. Spreading it on toast? Forget it. I’d be eating it straight out of the jar. Of course, with a spoon in my other hand, magically dipping itself into the peanut butter jar when no one was watching. Peanut butter + Nutella was a match made in the clouds, one that you couldn’t separate from me no matter how hard you tried!
But Nutella Isn’t Vegan
Nutella isn’t vegan though. Because of the milk products, it made me completely turned off to ever dipping my spoon in that chocolatey goodness. At the time, I did miss it, and Nutella using all plant-based ingredients was not a thing when I decided to stop licking it off of a spoon every day (ahem, 2014-ish). I didn’t have any idea how to make it myself at the time either, so I resorted to eating just the PB, no second spoon in sight. Soon, Nutella was off my radar when more and more vegan options were coming out.
At one point, vegan Nutella options did come to the market, and I tried one of them – only to find that hazelnuts were not the first ingredient (or the second) so it didn’t taste anything like Nutella. I then gave up on buying a Nutella substitute, and vowed to make my own at home (which I did make, at some points over the last few years)! But just using hazelnuts to make Nutella, when I ended up having hoards of them at home, wasn’t the only recipe in store!
I decided to try making Nutella ice cream (no freeze, no churn, no soft serve machine – only a blender required). But then I thought why not – coffee deserves a spot in this recipe. Since the natural flavor of NUTELLA + MOCHA is perfect for a summer day, not one thought about paying $5 for an iced coffee crosses my mind when I dig into this rich dairy-free ice cream.
Why You’ll Love This Vegan Chocolate Ice Cream
Whole Ingredients Ice Cream: This vegan soft serve ice cream is full of nutritious ingredients without any additives or refined sugar. Dates, cacao, banana and hazelnuts form the base of this recipe!
The ingredients in other plant-based ice creams range from coconut oil, xanthan gum, guar gum, acacia gum, sunflower lecithin, dipotassium phosphate, locust bean gum, tapioca maltodextrin and more. These help for the creaminess and keeping the ice cream shelf stable. However, I do love making ice cream at home because it’s cheaper, you can customize the flavors and it’s free of unneeded ingredients!
Substitutions
Frozen Bananas: These are the main ingredient, the KEY to the deliciously creamy taste. You can make so many dairy-free flavors of ice cream with this as the base!
So for this recipe, you’ll need to take two bananas. The riper/browner/spottier, the better. Remove the peel, chop them and put them in a container. Freeze them for a few hours in a single day, or leave them overnight for 8 hours. Then they are ready to use.
Aside from banana ice cream, frozen coconut cream (the creamy thick layer at the top of a can of coconut milk after you refrigerate it for a few hours), coconut milk or another plant-based milk, such as a low-calorie almond milk, have all been used as vegan options for ice cream bases. However, I do not recommend to substitute these for this recipe.
Dates: These add sweetness and creaminess. You need very soft Medjool dates – pits removed. If you can’t get your hands on these, you can substitute them with 1-2 tablespoons of vegan sweetener. I would use 100% maple syrup if you have it. Otherwise, agave, coconut syrup, date syrup, brown rice syrup or other liquid sweeteners can work. Start with 1 tablespoon and add more as desired.
Coffee + Nutella Flavors Substitution
Instant Coffee Powder: If you don’t have coffee powder, you can use just a splash of espresso, or very strong coffee. On the other hand, if you use black coffee, the flavor won’t come out as strong. Don’t add in the extra splash of milk if you’re already using a liquid form of coffee (eg. espresso). Make sure not to dilute the recipe, or it’ll be a smoothie instead of ice cream.
Cacao Powder: This is the raw, unprocessed version of unsweetened cocoa powder (I buy Organic Traditions cacao). You can substitute with regular cocoa powder.
Vanilla Extract: Use vanilla powder or scrape a fresh vanilla bean instead of real vanilla extract. Try to find vanilla that does not contain added dyes or caramel color, using as minimal ingredients as possible.
Hazelnuts: The star of the show, raw hazelnuts need to be included! Specifically, they must be toasted to bring out the flavor, which we do in the recipe card below. Once toasted, they are blended into the rest of the ingredients, and you’ll have an ice cream in no time!
Chocolate: Use vegan chocolate chips or chocolate chunks. Check the ingredient label to confirm there are no milk ingredients.
Note that some plant-based foods are “accidentally vegan.” I’ve noticed this with certain brands of chocolate chips. They are not specifically labelled as vegan because they were already free of animal products (hence the term “accidentally” vegan).
More Recipes You’ll Love
If you make this Vegan Chocolate Ice Cream, then leave a comment and star rating! Don’t forget to tag your photos @peanut_palate on Instagram. Enjoy!
Vegan Chocolate Ice Cream (Mocha & Nutella)
Equipment
- High-speed blender or food processor
- Small skillet
Ingredients
- 2 tsp instant coffee powder
- 3-4 large soft, pitted Medjool dates
- 2 frozen ripe bananas peeled and chopped
- 2 tbsp cacao powder
- ¼ cup raw hazelnuts
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- pinch pink salt
- splash oat milk
- dark chocolate chunks optional, for topping
Instructions
- To toast the hazelnuts, place a skillet on the stove top over high heat. Add the hazelnuts to it.
- Stir them around for a few minutes, or until you can see them browning. They will burn fast, but you can try to bite into one and tell if it tastes toasted (be careful, it will be hot) – it should taste more like the "nutella" flavor than an untoasted hazelnut does.
- Once they are toasted, turn off the heat and add the hazelnuts onto a towel. Rub the towel together to scrape the skins off of the nuts. They should easily come off. You can see a picture above of the hazelnuts in the cup, with the skins removed. Some of the skins won't come off, but as long as the majority of them are removed that should be fine.
- Now add the hazelnuts, along with the rest of the ingredients, to a blender.
- Blend until a smooth ice cream forms. You may need to stop the blender and scrape down the sides before you continue blending.
- Once it has formed into an ice cream with no more chunks of bananas, hazelnuts or dates remaining, pour it into a bowl. Top with optional dark chocolate and any other toppings, and eat right away!
