My Version of Magic Shell® with Gourmet Vanilla Ice Cream all Gluten & Dairy Free

Update: Hey guess what I won! Check it out here! There you have it; Simple Healthy Tasty has award winning recipes! If you aren't already a fan you will surely want to become one! ;)

I was going to wait until Summer to post this recipe but I decided I want to enter it in the Mountain Rose Herbs Recipe Contest ! Thanks to their high quality affordable coconut oil and other great products I am able to make so much fun stuff! When I was a kid I used to beg my Mom to buy me some "Magic Shell!" Once in a great while if I was good and did extra chores she would buy me some. I always thought it was so cool how it would harden and you would have crunchy chocolate on top of your ice cream.

I was smart enough to know that it had something to do with the ice cream being cold that made it harden. Unlike some of the people I recently read about who think it actually knows when it is on ice cream because they tested it on other things like Fruitti Pebbles, a tennis shoe and a bowl of mashed potato's (used because when scooped using an ice cream scooper it bears an uncanny resemblance to Ice cream and they thought it would trick the Magic Shell®)

Also as part of my reading I found paraffin wax was used so it would harden when on the cold ice cream. I don't know about you but I'd rather not eat or give my children wax plus all the refined sugar and who knows what else. So anyway I thought that coconut oil would do the same thing since it melts or hardens quickly depending on temperature. So I tried it and what do ya know IT WORKS GREAT!! Notice in the pictures that after a few seconds (pictures) it all hardens! Yippee! For Mother's day got to share another one of my many childhood treats with my children and I didn't have to feel guilty about it! Also you will definitely want to try the ice cream it is the best "gourmet" tasting vanilla ice cream I have ever had!

Hardening Chocolate Sauce

½ cup coconut oil

½ cup peanut butter or other all natural nut butter (like almond or cashew), OPTIONAL

6 Tablespoons raw carob powder

2/3 cup Sucanat or raw sugar, powdered fine in blender

pinch of sea salt

½ teaspoon vanilla

Warm up the coconut oil and almond butter in a saucepan until smooth. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir until well combined and very smooth with a wire whisk. Drizzle as desired over ice cream.

Truly Gourmet Vanilla Ice Cream

4 Cans coconut milk (not light)

2 quarts of Rice milk

1 whole vanilla bean cut into 3 or 4 pieces

3 cups raw sugar or Sucanat

ice cream machine

rock salt

plenty of ice for ice cream machine

In Blender blend 1 quart of the Rice Milk with the vanilla bean pieces until the vanilla is blended well and there are no chunks. Mix the rest of the ingredients all together till smooth if the coconut milk is very thick you may want to blend it in blender first so it is well blended. Just don't over blend at too high of a speed, this causes coconut milk to separate and you will have the wrong texture! If you want your ice cream to have an added kick try adding a pinch of cinnamon and/or cardamom or to taste!Put into your ice cream maker container. Follow the instructions on your ice cream machine to freeze. Makes about 1 gallon!

Oh P.S.  For all you Raw Foodies out there if you just barely heat the carob sauce or put it in a double boiler so it just gets warm not hot you can potentially have it be all raw. As for the ice cream I'm sure you can make your own raw coconut milk out of Young Coconut milk. Then you could use raw almond milk and raw agave for the sweetener. If you try it let me know how it turns out!