Strawberry rhubarb N'ice cream

Two of my favourite bloggers, the lovely ladies behind Tuulia and Vanelja, have written this summer's tastiest and prettiest cookbook: N'Ice cream / Hyvän olon jäätelökirja. The book is ooze full of amazing ice cream recipes, free of dairy, gluten and refined sugar. Ice cream that not only looks picture perfect but makes you feel good as well. What's not to love? I already got the book as an e-book and used it as an inspiration for my Monkey madness ice cream, but of course I had to get the hard copy as well, because it's insanely beautiful.

As a lucky coincidence (no coercion on my part, I swear!), mom just got a brand new blender, so it was only a matter of time when the first "real" batch of ice cream got made. And since it's me we're talking about here, it didn't take long at all. The only difficulty was to choose which one of the wonderful recipesgot tested first. That was a hard one! But since we already got some rhubarb stalks for a pie we took as a gift for my grandma, the choice was kinda done for me. Strawberry rhubarb for the win!

And oh boy, how good it turned out. I added a deciliter more strawberries than the original recipe, since I wanted a more intense strawberry flavour. Mom doesn't have an ice cream maker (and neither do I, although that problem will be solved the minute I get back home), so I made the ice cream with the "manual churning method", which means stirring the ice-cream-to-be every 30 minutes. I think my mixture was way runnier than the one in the book, for after 3 hours when the ice cream should have been done (according to the book) I was still left with a chilled strawberry soup. Then the night came, and froze the thing solid, undoing all my vigorous stirring efforts of the previous night. Oh well. The taste was still delicious, although the texture would have been much better when done in an ice cream maker, I'm sure.

But it still made some pretty decent photos. Some of these are my all-time food photo favourites. Thanks, mom, for the wonderful plates and glasses! It's always so inspiring to shoot food in somebody else's kitchen :)

The ice cream is amazing by itself, and even more amazing with whipped coconut cream and pieces of this heavenly chocolate licorice cake. And the mint leaves add a perfect end note to it all. A sweet, heavenly, good-for-you melt-in-your-mouth dessert sundae. Ah, bliss...<3 p="">

Strawberry rhubarb ice cream

1 large rhubarb stalk

3,5 dl fresh strawberries (plus some more to serve)

 1 can (400 ml) full fat coconut milk, chilled in the fridge overnight

1 tbsp cashew butter (I subbed with peanut butter)

1 tbsp coconut oil

3-5 tbsp organic honey (I used a mix of honey and maple syrup, I think 5 tbsp all together)

1/2 tsp vanilla powder/extract

Rinse the rhubarb and peel if you'd like. Chop into small pieces. Rinse strawberries and remove cores. Scoop the solid white part of the coconut milk into a blender. Add rhubarb, cashew butter, coconut oil, sweetener, vanilla and about 2,5 dl of the strawberries. Blend until the consistency is nice and creamy. Add sweetener if necessary.

If you have an ice cream maker: Add the mixture into the machine and make into ice cream according to the machine instructions. Chop the remaining strawberries into small pieces and add into the ice cream shortly before it's done.

If you don't have an ice cream maker: Chop the remaining strawberries into small pieces and add into the mixture. Pour into a freezer-proof tin. Freeze until done, mixing every 30 minutes or so.