When our kids ask for ice cream for breakfast, we say, “Yay!” That's because our family makes super simple homemade vegan ice cream–equally delicious and nutritious! Our favorite right now is this divine chocolate almond ice cream.

This quick recipe demo shows you the start-to-finish process.

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Divine Chocolate Almond Ice Cream

The Story

This past month, our family dedicated 30 days toward an immersion in the raw food vegan diet. Naturally, we documented our findings here on Steemit, as you can see in the various posts we've made, leading up to today's recipe. See: (1) Breakfast Chocolates; (2) Raw Cashew Coconut Fudgeballs; (3) Raw German Chocolate Cake; and (4) Breakfast Ice Cream.

To our surprise, we discovered a dreamy “ice cream” made with only two ingredients: activated nuts and frozen fruit. This creamy treat closely resembles the taste and texture of traditional ice cream. Add cacao powder, and you have a chocolate ice cream! Add the sweetener of your choice and you have pure divinity.

This recipe calls for four ingredients.

The Recipe

Almonds and frozen fruit, raw cacao powder... these are a few of my favorite things. For this dessert, the preparation is simply a matter of mixing ingredients in a food processor. However, there's also the opportunity to improve your creation further by giving your almonds a royal spa treatment. ;) Yes, ideally, you'll soak raw almonds for 8-9 hours and then remove the skins (see the demo video above). This activates the almonds and gives your family the ice cream experience.

Ingredients:

• 1 C almonds (soaked and skinned)
• 1-2 C mango or banana (frozen)
• 2 T raw cacao powder
• 2 T agave nectar

Instructions:

• Soak almonds 8-10 hours. Remove skins.
• In a food processor, blend almonds, frozen fruit, cacao powder, and agave.
• Taste test and add more cacao or agave, depending on your family's flavor preferences.
• Serve in an ice cream bowl.

Note: Dates work great as a substitute for the agave.

Soak raw almonds in water for 8-9 hours, ideally.

An ordinary food processor mixes and whips these ingredients into a delightful dessert.

This dessert serves our entire family of five! That's because raw desserts are potent and packed with satisfying substance.

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What Makes This Recipe Divine?

The Superlative “Superfood”

Raw cacao is the ultimate ingredient in raw desserts, because of its terrific health benefits and its central role in a chocolatier's recipe book. While I can understand why people prefer the sweeter and milkier commercial chocolates we see in stores, there's such a richness to cacao itself. To me, cacao beans are among the most pleasurable foods on the planet.

Did you know that cacao beans once held so much value that they were used as a form of currency? Yes, the Maya and Aztec cultures revered cacao 5,000 years ago, and they concocted various cacao elixirs for ceremonial purposes. The Aztecs believed that cacao beans were the gift of Quetzalcoatl, the god of wisdom. The cacao tree is native to the Americas, centered in the Mesoamerican region. There, cacao beans are commonly harvested, fermented, and then ground to order at chocolate mills, where they can be mixed with a variety of ingredients such as cinnamon, chili peppers, almonds, vanilla, and other spices to create drinking chocolate. Ground cacao is also an important ingredient in tejate and mole. This information is paraphrased from Wikipedia.

The Accentuation

The qualities of our beloved cacao are often enhanced with ingredients such as vanilla, sugar, and milk. We can upgrade these desires for familiarity, sweetness, creaminess, with a bit of culinary creativity. In our family, we prefer to gain the creamy sensation through the use of nuts, like cashews, pecans, hazelnuts, and almonds. For most of our sweet treats, we rely on our staple fruits, such as bananas, apples, and on spacial occasions we go for berries or mango. For an extra sweet flavor, we favor dates, and we also appreciate agave nectar. These are the reasons why we choose these four ingredients for this recipe.

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Steemit Culinary Challenge #44

The Invitation To Get Creative In The Kitchen

To me, I see this event as an opportunity to express ourselves creatively in the kitchen, week after week, while also gaining recipe ideas from other culinary artists. Personally, I am inspired by @progressivechef and @lenasveganliving, among many others. I am grateful to @woman-onthe-wing for creating this brilliant and beautiful invitation, and I'm also thankful to @leotrap, @gringalicious, @sirwinchester, and all the others who make the Steemit Culinary Challenge possible. Thanks too to you, dear reader, for allowing me to share a bit of creative energy with you.

Wishing you an incredible edible day!

–Cabe

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All content is original, by @cabelindsay.