Manual crank processor ice cream (Ref: YouTube Tupperware one).

[Diana Cda]

I used to have a manual chopper so when I stumbled upon this on YouTube while looking for something else entirely, I was intrigued. We could come up with a raw equivalent for the actual ice cream since it calls for frozen fruit. That part should be fairly easy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6VI3pDu5c4

I find the Quick Chef 3 intriguing. It has 3 blades, apparently:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts8jlz5WZGg

When I have a way to, I'll test this out. I have my mini food chopper which should do the trick, too.

p.s., I'm in no way shape or form affiliated with Tupperware and find their products expensive but just wanted to share since the ice cream seems easy to make. Must admit, though, that despite my indifference to their products, the one with the 3 blades seems like a good idea. Ever since I saw the Ninja Master Food prep with its 3 blades, it seems like the 3rd blade is a good thing.

[Diana Cda]

I've "converted" the recipe from the video. Here are my proposed raw equivalents:

1 C heavy almond cream, made by blending soaked almonds with less water than one would use for an almond mylk (1/2 the usual amount of water, or less?? - maybe 1/4-1/2 C soaked almonds with 1/2-3/4 C water??)
1 C frozen strawberries
1/4 C date paste or sweetener of your choice (or, to taste?)
1/4-1/2 t of ground vanilla (or, to taste)

These estimates above should be taste-tested. I'm betting that once we get the right flavour, the rest would follow smoothly.

Process in a manual, hand-crank food chopper for about one minute.

That might make the same type of soft-serve ice cream that she describes in the video, but raw, so it would be a hundred times better, I'm betting!! :)

[Diana Cda]

Just thought I'd pass this tip along ... something I learned on the food channel last year with the Barefoot Contessa, I believe her "stage" name is. (I never stopped watching the food channel; I get great raw food veggie/fruit tips there every once in a while!).

She showed how one can freeze fruit. In this particular case, she was freezing berries so she showed how you place them a cookie sheet lined with a sheet of parchment paper. You pour the berries on the parchment paper then smooth out to one layer of fruit. Once frozen, break them apart completely then pour the frozen berries into a jar and put back in the freezer. Since then, that's how I freeze my berries and it has the added advantage of being much quicker than the old way, when I used to pour all into a jar and freeze. They'd be a pain to separate, too. With this cookie sheet method, easy to measure out a tablespoon of frozen fruit from the jar as they keep separate.

Well, I used this method with whole fruit that needed cutting up. I peeled and cut up kiwi fruit this morning and the pieces were frozen by early this afternoon. Since I only have one cookie sheet, I emptied it this evening of the kiwi and placed the frozen kiwi fruit into two jars and put back in the freezer.

I rinsed and then hulled the strawberries using a tool I've had for years and years and years and have _never_ used, a strawberry huller. It's an inexpensive gadget that you can get at any mass discount store for peanuts!

I hulled 1 pound of strawberries and found the huller also a great tool for taking out any bad bits on the strawberries themselves. Then I placed each on a cutting board, stem side down (on the flat base) and sliced from the "top of the pyramid" straight down to get two tear-shaped halves. I placed each one down flat and cut through each side 4 times so that I ended up with 9 smaller pieces for each strawberry half.

Then I placed the strawberry pieces on the lined cookie sheet. These strawberry bits are in the freezer now. I'll wait at least a couple of hours, then I'll take the cookie sheet out to separate the pieces, and roll them around, so that all the pieces unstick from the parchment paper and each other. They should be done in a handful of hours so I'll either make the ice cream test right away or wait till tomorrow.

I'll post back the results. Oh, and I put 3/4 C of almonds to soak before I started this so I'll make the almond cream just before I start making the ice cream. I'll use my mini food chopper since I don't have a hand crank chopper anymore. <sigh> Now I wish I hadn't gotten rid of my old hand-crank one!! Imagine having ice cream ready in no time in this way without using electricity (if it works ... which I don't see why it wouldn't ... !). Ah well. For this type of ice cream, it would be worth buying a new one at some point! :)

[Diana Cda]

I just finished processing the ice cream. It's in a covered glass bowl in my freezer now, as we speak. Here's the "recipe" I've come up with so far, after I rawified the Tupperware hand cranker one from YouTube:


[NEXT TIME I'LL DOUBLE THE RECIPE.]

3/4 C almonds, soaked
3/4 C water
1 C strawberries, cut up and frozen beforehand
5-6 T date paste, or sweetener or your choice (I used 5 T)

1. Process the almonds in the water in a blender until smooth.
2. Add to a food processor bowl.
3. Add the strawberries and the sweetener to the FP, as well.
4. Process until all frozen strawberry pieces are the consistency you like.
(I processed until very smooth.)
5. Place this mixture in a bowl in the freezer to freeze up into ice cream.

I'll let everyone know how it turns. The flavour at this stage was great.

We'll be eating in a couple of hours or so so that should give it enough time to freeze up enough. I imagine we'll just need to thaw for a minute or two before serving, so that it's not too rock hard to spoon out.

The only thing that I might find I need to add in the future is a bit of oil to the recipe, maybe a T or so (?). I've made raw vegan ice cream before using a hand-crank ice cream machine and I found that adding a bit of oil helped. Vegan ice cream tends to get ice crystals which reduces the flavour/consistency to "real" ice cream. When I added oil one time, years ago, the ice cream came out resembling what we grew up on, enough that I think cooked fooders would take to vegan raw ice cream very, very well.

But I'll see. I have tons of frozen strawberries left over so I'll definitely be making more and will continue to experiment.

Re the quantity, I found that it wasn't enough mixture for my food processor to handle well. I had to stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl a couple of times. Doubling the amounts should make this process much better next time around, plus making enough ice cream to have more than one dessert for 3 people, which is the number of adults who'll be having ice cream today. We'll finish this batch in one go! <g>

Also, I think I'll try adding an additional 1/4 C of frozen strawberries once the rest is smooth, then processing that last bit only very slightly. I think that having a version that has chunks of strawberry pieces in it might be very delicious, too!

I'll report back. :)