Ice cream lovers, listen up! If you like ice cream (as much as I do), but don’t want to invest a fortune into buying an ice cream maker to get that creamy texture – here’s a recipe for you! This pitaya coconut ice cream is just amazing! It’s surprisingly fresh and creamy at the same time and the perfect healthy treat for hot summer days! 🙂 Now, what is pitaya? I’ve been asked this many times after posting a photo of this treat on my Instagram account. Some of you might know pitaya under the name of dragon fruit. Pitaya, or dragon fruit, is a beautiful fruit belonging to the cactus species indigenous to the Americas. The flesh is either pink or white and resembles the texture of a kiwi fruit, because of the black crunchy seeds inside. It’s super refreshing, juicy and, most importantly, jam packed with antioxidants and vitamins!
What’s great about this recipe is that you can actually achieve this creamy, thick ice cream texture without the help of an ice cream machine or stirring the texture yourself for hours! One of my favourite Instagramers Earthyandy inspired me to try out this technique and it works amazingly! She’s really amazing so if you don’t know her yet, make sure to check her out. I’m definitely gonna experiment much more with all kinds of flavours and keep you guys updated on the progress. Already thinking about chocolate and cookies for the next one… 🙂
If you don’t have access to pitaya, feel free to adjust the recipe and add other fruits instead! A great replacement would be blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, acaí, mango, or whatever you like. Also, if you can’t find coconut sugar, you could simply sweeten it with maple syrup or date syrup!
If you try out this recipe, please let me know what you think and post it on Instagram (#thetastyk) or the Facebook post! 🙂
- 1 cup cashews (soaked for min. 6 hours)
- 1 can coconut cream
- ¼ cup coconut sugar (or 5-8 pitted dates)
- 1 tsp vanilla bean powder
- pinch of Himalayan salt
- 2 pitaya/ dragon fruits (with pink flesh to get the nice colour)
- Place all the ingredients into a high speed blender and mix until you get a smooth texture (it will be quite liquid). If you want the colour to be stronger feel free to add more pitaya.
- Pour the mixture into a ziplock bag laying flat or silicon muffin/ ice cube trays and freeze for 4-5 hours (or overnight).
- Cut the firm mixture into small cubes or pop them out of the molds and blend up once again (this step is crucial for the creaminess)!
- Scoop the mixture into the desired ice cream form and place back into the freezer for 1-2 hours until it's firm enough to scoop it out nicely!
- If you don't want to eat it immediately make sure to let it soften a bit at room temperature until you can scoop it out nicely.
- Serve with coconut flakes and fresh fruit!
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After reading this recipe I can tell it will be so yummy! Thanks for sharing this.
Yay! 🙂 Hope you’ll like it!
beuatiful purple and adorable looking!
Thanks! 🙂