Raw Vegan Soft Serve Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Piggies! It is DAY 4 of "I Love Vitamix" month in honour of my amazing Vitamix 5200 Giveaway. Don't miss out on your chance to win what will become your best healthy friend in the kitchen! Simply create a piggy name and enter your email address for your chance to win. Then share on Facebook and Twitter for bonus entries. Every time your piggy name is mentioned in an entry, you get a bonus entry! So, share share share to get your hands on that Vitamix! 

Today is a special day for another reason. I am thrilled to be featuring the amazing Vibeke Vale as the January Pig Of The Month. Vibeke is a personal vegan chef and one of the most inspiring and knowlegable people I know in the vegan/vegetarian world. Check out her wonderful blog, Vegan Faery to find some of the delicious easy recipes she makes for her clients.

I asked Vibeke what her favourite healthy Vitamix recipe was, and I was a proud little piggy when she named my raw vegan vanilla cashew cream that she discovered when making the raw vegan breakfast bombs that were featured in Glamour. If you want to make these raw vegan gluten free breakfast parfaits follow the video I made for Chow as part of their Chow Tips Series.  

As a fellow "Vitamix Addict" she mentioned a quick easy raw vegan whipped banana ice cream her family make by blending 1 vanilla bean and 4 bananas. This was very reminiscent of some fruit creams I have made in my Vitamix and food processor on many occasions. I don't know about you, but fruit cream is so appealing to me because you can eat it immediately after you blend it! Sometimes, I just don't want to wait to churn it in the ice cream maker before I devour it! I want instant gratification! Hey, I am a piggy!

Frozen bananas make a wonderful creamy base for frozen desserts, and adding in other fruit and spices makes the flavour combinations literally endless! Vibeke suggested some tasty variations her family make on a weekly basis to keep it interesting! They add in all kinds of nut butters and spices. Vibeke also said they like to add fresh mint leaves, and that is the flavour I went with because it is nut free. I wanted to create a quick easy dessert my niece, Alexandra, who is allergic to gluten, dairy, eggs and nuts could eat. Many of the raw vegan ice creams I make utilize raw nuts and coconut, so this is a fantastic healthy treat option for her and other people with mutiple food allergies. 

So here is Vitamix Recipe #4: Raw Vegan Mint Chocolate Chip Soft Serve Ice Cream. This raw vegan mint chocolate chip instant soft serve ice cream is super quick and tastes delicious! Make sure you see my notes in the recipe. You need to have all of your ingredients on hand because you have a small window of opportunity to get the consistency right before it starts melting from the friction heat of the blades.

I know with a Vitamix that you don't need to cut things into small pieces. But I have suggested that you do for this particular recipe to reduce the blending time in order to achieve th desired consistency before melting begins! Make sure you use the tamper to guide the bananas through the blades, and as soon as you hear the machine break through the bananas and four peaks form, turn the machine off and the mixture will be perfect. It all takes less than 10 seconds. I have added in the raw agave just to round out the flavours and take the edge off the mint. But you don't have to add this. The spinach juice is also optional. It is to replicate the green minty colour that we associate with conventional mint ice creams. You can leave that out too. It does not affect the flavour.

I call this recipe "Mint Choc Chip Vita-Dream". This raw vegan recipe is gluten free, dairy free, egg free, nut free, and soy free.
ENJOY! It is absolutely piggilicious. Please share your blends here so we can all try you special blends! Oink Oink! 

Make sure you check out Vibeke's story and get inspired for 2012. This little piggy ROCKS!