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I am not personally vegan, but I have a Thing (with a capital "T") for ice cream made with coconut milk. I think it's so dreamy and makes such a perfect base for fresh fruit or chocolate and nuts. So, in short, it's great with everything.

The only thing to know about coconut milk-based ice creams is that you want to go with full-fat coconut milk (avoid the "lite" options, and read the labels carefully). Avoid a product called coconut cream, as it's really not the same thing.

I opted to sweeten the ice cream with agave to make it 100 percent vegan. I tend to choose honey over agave at home, usually because I find the sweetness of agave to be a bit too strong and forward, but in this recipe the creamy coconut milk seems to temper it.

As for the strawberries, the one thing I can't stand with many homemade strawberry ice creams are the chunks of strawberry that inevitably become frozen little pebbles and completely lose any berry flavor. I wanted to avoid that here, so I decided to cook down a strawberry sauce to stream in instead of folding in chunks of whole berries.

The strawberry sauce couldn't be simpler: I quartered 2 cups of berries and cooked them down for about 5 minutes with some natural sugar (I used Zulka brand pure cane sugar, which I've been kind of into lately for baking and adding to coffee and tea -- it's very minimally processed). I let that cool, and slowly streamed it into the ice cream base at the very end.

When I make this again, I'll reserve 1/4 cup of the strawberry sauce and swirl it directly into the finished ice cream instead of processing the whole batch in the ice cream maker. That way, it'll be even more visually swirled and vibrant. And I have to say, some graham cracker bits would be mighty nice here, as might some chocolate chips (or vegan chocolate chips).

Vegan Strawberry Swirl Ice Cream

Serves 4

2 (15-ounce) cans full-fat coconut milk

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