Indulge in the delightful simplicity of homemade vanilla date ice cream! This easy-to-make treat combines heavenly vanilla with the natural sweetness of dates. With just a few ingredients, you can have a velvety-smooth ice cream that will satisfy your cravings. Even better, there are no added sugars
🌟Why You’ll Love This Recipe
🧾Ingredients in This Recipe
See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.
👩🍳How to Make This Recipe
Before starting your ice cream, put the bowl of your ice cream maker in the freezer. It is best if you leave it in the freezer overnight.
🤩 Pro Tip for Ice Cream
Although you can make ice cream without an ice cream maker, most methods yield a less smooth texture. You can try freezing the ice cream base into an ice cube tray and blending them together, but the end result isn’t perfect.
However, if you don’t have an ice cream maker, I recommend making semifreddo, instead. You can use this semifreddo guide for any flavor, or make this Strawberry Matcha Semifreddo.
🤩 Pro Tip
Make your ice cream more of a gelato consistency by using 2 cups of milk and 1 cupAdd the other half of the dates to a food processor with the milk. Run the processor until both are well combined, which takes about 3-4 minutes. of cream. The texture will be less like ice cream, and more like gelato. Also delicious, and a choice I make every once in a while to reduce the fat in the recipe!
After freezing overnight, you are ready to scoop and serve. This ice cream doesn’t freeze as hard as other homemade ice creams because of all the dates, so be sure to give it that full freeze or enjoy it like a soft serve!
Top the scooped ice cream with roughly chopped pistachios before serving for extra tasty flavor and texture.
🍨 Related Recipes
Summertime is cold dessert time! Tantalize your tastebuds with these frozen sweet recipes.
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Vanilla Date Ice Cream (No Added Sugar)
Ingredients
- 5 egg yolks
- 300 g Medjool Dates pitted and rough chopped
- 2 cups whole milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract or 1 vanilla bean
- 1 ¼ cups heavy cream
Instructions
- Put the bowl of your ice cream maker in the freezer.
- Whisk the yolks together and set aside.
- Add half of the dates to a food processor with the milk. Run until well combined, 3-4 minutes.
- Warm the milk & date mixture with the vanilla and rough chopped dates until it just lightly simmers. Use a whisk to break up the chunks of dates. (If using a vanilla bean, slice lengthwise, scrape out the specks of vanilla, and add the bean and specks to the milk mixture.)
- Temper the egg mixture with the milk/date/vanilla mixture.
- Return to the sauce pan and cook until thickened, stirring slowly and constantly. It should get to 170F.
- Remove from heat. Add the cream. Chill in the refrigerator overnight.
- The next day, add your chilled ice cream to your ice cream maker. Churn (stir setting) until it is the thickness of soft serve ice cream, 20-25 minutes.
- Transfer to a container you can freeze, cover with parchment paper, and freeze at least 4 hours.
- Optional: Top with roughly chopped pistachios before serving!
This was delicious! I used about 150 g of dates and added a slash of maple. I also chopped the dates, soaked them in the warmed milk, and then used my immersion blender. Worked like a charm and fewer dishes!
5 stars for how delicious this ice cream turned out. My mom can’t have regular sugar but can have some dates so I tested this out today to see if it would work for my Easter dinner menu this weekend. I did reduce the dates to 200g and I added some diced ripe strawberries as a mix-in at the end. So good. My only issue… am I the only one whose food processor doesn’t have a seal? I had no idea my food processor wasn’t leak proof so when I turned it on, half of the milk went flying over all over my kitchen within 2 seconds. What a giant mess, took an hour to clean up. My fault for not knowing this, but just a caveat for anyone else who has a more basic food processor without a seal. I switched to a blender and it worked just fine. Thanks for the recipe, my mom will be thrilled that she can have dessert with the rest of us.
My new recipe for homemade ice cream with out all of the sugar!!!!
This is the bomb; even better with roasted pecans which I folded into the finished product before freezing. Yummmmmm 🥰
I love how this recipe turned out. I was a bit worried because the milk was very foamy after mixing it with the dates. But I trusted the process and the ice cream turned out delicious.
The only adjustment I made was making some brown butter pecans that I added towards the end of the churning process.
It tastes just like a butter pecan ice cream and I am sure I will make it again. I’m thinking what other flavors/ combinations I can make using this date & milk base so I wouldn’t have to use any other sweeteners.