With the middle of July and 30°C degrees outside, these coconut lavender berry popsicles are the best remedy. The freshness of the coconut and the absence of eggs, paired with the seasons best berries, provides for one of the best creamy summer indulgences. Blueberries and raspberries are in full swing now, painting the garden in vibrant purple and pink colors.
cooking the berries …
To get the nice and creamy fruit in the popsicles instead of a rock-solid frozen treat I usually roast or cook the fruit first. This reduces the water content which in turn reduces the amount of ice crystals in popsicles.
So creamy base and creamy swirl! What’s not to like?
Why stop only with the berries? With so many options now, fruit wise, it is quite hard to decide what to include in the ice cream. Best decision, just add anything you have on hand. So in this recipe, I also made a mix of apricots and peaches. There was one batch with passion fruit as well. In short, just add anything you would like and it should work.
the ice cream base …
The main ingredient for the base, as far as flavor is concerned, is the coconut milk. Make sure to use good quality coconut milk with nice and fresh coconut flavor.
The addition of cream is to connect the base since coconut milk has quite a water content.
infusing the ice cream base …
With the current abundance of fruit, there is also an abundance of flowers, more specifically lavender. To infuse the cream base I added slightly crushed edible lavender flowers. It is not overpowering, but just a slight hint of lavender.
If you don’t like the fragrance of lavender you can omit it. The flavor of the coconut is still there to provide for a nice refreshing ice cream base.
Basically, these coconut lavender berry popsicles are screaming summer!
I love anything berry ice cream and these coconut lavender berry popsicles are one of my favorite. Hope you like it as well!
Enjoy!
Coconut lavender popsicles with roasted fruit
Equipment & Tools
- ice-cream maker (optional)
INGREDIENTS
Ice cream base
- 500 g heavy cream (> 30% fat)
- 250 g coconut milk (approx. 60% fat)
- 150 g unrefined sugar
- 2 tbsp vanilla paste (Nielsen-Massey)
- 6 lavender branches (flowers only)
Berries & Fruit
- 75 g blueberries
- 75 g raspberries
- 75 g peaches
- 75 g apricots
- 1 lemon (juice)
- 20 g unrefined sugar
- 40 g honey (acacia)
INSTRUCTIONS
Ice cream base
- To the medium pot add the heavy cream, coconut milk, sugar, vanilla paste, and lavender flowers. Put on medium heat and with continuous stirring warm it up enough to dissolve the sugar, around 5 minutes. It's ok if it boils but don't let it boil too long.
- Remove from the heat and transfer to a glass bowl. Cover so that it doesn't develop a thin "crust" layer and cool to room temperature.
- Once cooled transfer to the fridge and let it cool completely, preferably overnight.
Preparing the fruit
- In one smaller pot add the blueberries, raspberries, half the sugar (10g), juice of half the lemon, and half the honey (20g). Cook on medium heat while stirring for 8-10 min or until the fruit is broken down and the water from the fruit has mostly evaporated and you are left with a nice jam-like mixture.
- Cool to room temperature and transfer to a clean bowl, cover and refrigerate overnight.
- In a separate pot, add the apricots and peaches along with the remaining, sugar, honey, and lemon juice. Cook on medium heat while stirring for 8-10 min or until the fruit is broken down and the water from the fruit has mostly evaporated and you are left with a nice jam-like mixture.
- Cool to room temperature and transfer to a clean bowl, cover and refrigerate overnight.
Churning and assembling the ice-cream
- Churn the cream mixture in your ice cream maker according to its instructions.
- Take the popsicle molds out and to each add 1 tbsp of churned ice cream and 1 tbsp of fruit mixture. Once halfway filled use a thin skewer to fill the air pockets and swirl the mix a bit. Don't over mix it.
NOTES
- You can use fresh or frozen fruit.
- If you don’t have an ice cream maker you can freeze the cream mixture for 1 hour. Within this 1 hour stir the mixture couple of times to get a more even texture with fewer ice crystals. The ice cream should set a bit but not completely. If it is still very runny leave it longer in the freezer. Once it has thickened you can proceed and add it to the popsicle molds as written in the recipe directions.
- If you don’t want to make popsicles you can always churn the ice cream and interchangeably add the cream and fruit mixture in a large ice cream bowl. Swirl the fruit mixture with the skewer or dull knife to get nice patterns.
