Vegan Vanilla Ice Cream

I was having a sweet craving this evening… actually it was going on all day and I was trying to come up with something I could make with what I had on hand. Finally, the idea for this hit me. And oh did it hit the spot… the tahini adds an extra smoothness to this so it's even more like real ice cream than most frozen banana-based non-dairy ice creams. The vanilla extract and rapadura go so nicely together, creating that sweet, vanilla flavor.

Even if you eat dairy, it's worth trying this for it's own sake. Totally guilt-free desserts, I love 'em! Try some of my other raw vegan ice cream recipe too.

Ingredients:
1 ripe banana
3 frozen bananas
1 tbsp tahini
1 tbsp rapadura sugar (or sweetener of your choice)
1 tbsp water
1 teas organic vanilla extract (or vanilla pod if you have it)

Instructions:
Peel the ripe banana and break it into pieces into blender. Add the tahini, rapadura, water and vanilla extract. Blend until smooth. Add the frozen bananas and blend again until smooth and creamy.

If you want this to be an all-raw dessert, be sure to use raw tahini. Often the ready made tahini is made from lightly toasted sesame seeds. I've had trouble finding raw tahini in New Zealand, but you can buy grinders and juicers with attachments that allow you to create your own. I love tahini so much, and it's such a small part of most of my recipes that I just use the best organic tahini I can find, even though I'm trying to eat a mostly raw and living food diet.

Eat immediately!

Serves 2.

Kitchen tips: To cleanup I added about half a cup of water to the blender jug (no soap, just water) and blended on high until most of the remains had been ‘water blasted' off the sides of the jug.

I poured this ‘vanilla banana milk' into a bowl for my dogs and Zoe loved it! She lapped up every last drop and came to see if there was more of this yummy stuff left.

Zoe works hard, her day-job is in excavation. It's hot, thirsty work. A cool, thirst-quenching treat like this is just the thing after a hard day's work.