There are some foods I never wanted to make at home, but this blog has made me more willing to try new things. But Ice cream is something I never thought I would be willing to try. Why not? I thought I needed to buy a machine that I would inevitably use once or twice, regret purchasing, and banish to my garage because I have precious little kitchen storage. Then I started searching for peanut butter recipes to complement the Thai pork dish I just made and found this Healthy Salted Caramel Cookie Dough Ice Cream Sundae recipe. Healthy ice cream? No. Way. Wait, it’s vegan? That gets a raised eyebrow. *Reads recipe* Huh, there’s no peanut butter in it. Pinterest, your search is wonky. No ice cream machine needed? Well, okay then, I’m making ice cream!
This healthy cookie dough ice cream sundae is everything you’d want a sundae to be, plus more. There’s the amazing vegan refined sugar-free salted caramel sauce, the gluten-free cookie dough, and the dairy-free ice cream – which are all individually amazing, but together… they will blow your mind.
The Ingredients
I expected all kinds of kitchen sorcery and ingredient substitutes to make this recipe, but it was pretty straightforward. It is technically three recipes: salted caramel sauce, cookie dough, and the ice cream, but all of the ingredients are shown below. I even got into the vegan spirit of things and picked up some vegan chocolate chips from Whole Foods.
One change I made after I photographed the ingredients was switching the almonds with some leftover almond meal I found in my refrigerator. I had planned to grind the almonds in my food processor just like the oats. Then I found the almond meal and figured I save myself the effort while using up the leftovers.
The Process
Like I mentioned earlier, this is actually three separate recipes (links to the caramel sauce and cookie dough are included in the ice cream recipe). I went into this thinking it would be confusing to have so much going on at once, but it all went very smoothly. There was some strategy involved, though, and this is how I did everything:
- Peel, chop, and freeze bananas
- Make cookie dough
- Make caramel sauce
- Blend ice cream and freeze
- Assemble and eat
That gave things time to freeze, refrigerate, and cool as needed. I froze the ice cream overnight in a sealed container. The 8.2 cup size was large enough to comfortably fit all of the ice cream mixture. The low rectangular shape also made layering the ingredients very easy.
The only slight issue I had was getting the food processor to blend the frozen banans. It blended everything that was on the bottom, near the blades but had trouble getting to the bits on top. I had to open it and use a wooden spoon to push the bananas down several times, but it eventually got the job done. Smaller pieces might have been a better idea.
Despite the minor issue with blending the ice cream, I got this recipe done way ahead of the 37 minutes listed. It took me 20 minutes to make everything plus time to freeze overnight. This ice cream was much easier to make than I ever imagined!
