Vegan Nutella Ice Cream

It seems I didn’t go to enough meetings this week and the raw chocolate coconut butter did not quite take care of my vegan chocolate fix. My chocoholism is in control today and I am posting another delectable vegan chocolate treat that promises to kick even the most sober cream dreamer and cacaoholic back into denial. Today we move onto step three in our twelve step program – “pairing hazelnuts with chocolate in Nutella requires us to make amends with our colons. But if we make vegan hazelnut cacao ice cream with natural sweeteners we can indulge without any letters of apology”.

I was watching the morning news this morning and a commercial came on advertising Nutella spread as a wonderful way to get children to eat breakfast! I believe it said something like, “good wholesome ingredients like skim milk, hazelnuts and hint of cocoa”. This is all true. But there is also a truckload of refined sugar in the jar. Don’t get me wrong -- I am a Nutella devotee from way back. That little jar of hazelnut heaven is enough to kick my sugar free, dairy free snout into permanent denial and almost send me packing into candida overgrowth hell. In a previous life, I was known to break the seal, poke my spoon, dig my snout in, and not draw breath until after I had eaten and licked out the entire jar in one sitting! Sad but true. There it is -- chocoholic confessions of a healthy blender pig.

Nowadays, I am not sure if I could even lift one spoonful into my snout. It is totally delicious. But far too sweet for my sensitive little refined sugar free, dairy free taste buddies. So rather than sell my “whole foods soul” in aisle number 8 of my local grocery store, I decided to compromise and indulge without too much collateral damage by offering up a vegan nutella ice cream that is a little more forgiving on the allergy free pig.

I am always a sucker for vegan ice cream and vegan puddings. I had some left over raw coconut meat from making raw cultured coconut pudding this week and I was going to make a gorgeous rich decadent plain chocolate ice cream. But the Nutella commercial got my nutty chocoholic taste buds twitching, and I decided on the spot to use my old nutty friend as inspiration and make a nutella ice cream that would give me a taste of my greedy past without having to “coat check” my colon. No sooner had the spot changed over to an alka-seltzer ad (how appropriate), I had snatched my blender carriage (my Vitamix) with one hand and my raw cacao powder with the other, in a double-barrelled action that would have made a ping pong player dive for cover.

I must say, the results with this nutella ice cream were no less than spectacular; and if you can muscle up, put your fatigues on and crack some young Thai coconuts; you too, can be transported to guilt-free Nutella nirvana. This vegan ice cream, (which I can’t technically call raw simply because I roasted the hazelnuts, which you don’t need to do) is utterly sublime.  If you are looking for stunning Vitamix recipes and blender recipes this one is a winner and not to be missed. It is gluten free, dairy free, egg free, soy free and sugar free. “Oh, Yummy in my greedy piggy tummy”.

Now I am off to a meeting.