Recipe: Honey Roasted Fennel & Basil Ice Cream, Featuring our Sweet Tincture

This homemade herbal ice cream is sweet, decadent, and nutritious just like our 01/SWEET Tincture that inspired it! We hope you love it as much as we do...

It feels like spring has sprung in Atlanta, so I decided to dust off my ice cream maker for it’s first churn of the year. I made a vegan caramelized fennel and basil ice cream. It was bright, velvety, and tasted like spring! 

Our sweet tincture - a tasty herbal glycerite that soothes physical and emotional stress, is the star of this dessert. It is both the inspiration for the ice creams’ flavor and a key ingredient in the recipe. 

Fun fact - glycerin helps ice cream stay soft and scoopable instead of icy, and amplifies it’s creamy mouthfeel. So the tincture plays a dual action in this recipe by enhancing the flavor AND texture. 

I also used the tincture's flavor profile / similar ingredients for the ice cream, with an oat milk base, basil, fennel bulb, cinnamon, and vanilla. In the tincture, we use tulsi basil, but since tulsi isn’t back in bloom just yet, I used sweet basil in the ice cream this time. I can’t wait to make it again this summer with some seventh generation tulsi that keeps reseeding itself in my garden! 

Ingredients: 

• 1 can of full fat coconut milk
• 2 cups of oat milk 
• 1/3 cup sweetener of choice
• 30 grams of fresh basil
• 1 fennel bulb 
• 2 tablespoons of honey 
• 1 teaspoon of olive oil 
• 1 tablespoon of the 01/SWEET tincture
• 1 tablespoon of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 1/8 teaspoon salt 

Instructions:

• Chill the coconut milk in the refrigerator overnight. If you’re using an ice cream maker, chill the bowl in the freezer overnight as well.

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. 

• Cut off the fennel fronds (save for garnish), and chop the fennel bulb into 1 inch slices. Coat with the honey and olive oil, and toss. 

• Bake the fennel in the oven until it is fork tender and caramelized.

• Combine the milks, caramelized fennel, basil, sweetener, sweet tincture, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and salt into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. 

• Chill the liquid mixture in the fridge for an hour, or up to overnight. 

• If using an ice cream maker, add the liquid to the ice cream maker, and churn for 30 minutes and voilà, you have delicious and nutritious herbal ice cream.

• The consistency of the ice cream directly from the maker is like a soft serve. For a harder ice cream, put it in a bowl with a lid and chill in the freezer. It lasts for up to 2 weeks in an airtight container! 

• If you don’t have an ice cream maker, no worries you can still make this ice cream! Just take the chilled liquid mixture and pour it into an 8-10 inch square baking dish. Metal pans work best because they freeze quickly, but a glass pan will work too. Freeze for 90 minutes. Remove from the freezer and whisk the mixture, scraping the sides of the pan and breaking up any frozen chunks.

• Return to the freezer and continue the process of whisking and scraping the sides 4-8 times, in 30 minute intervals. The more you whisk, the fluffier the final product will be. After a few hours it should be at a soft serve consistency. Place it in a bowl with a fitting lid and continue to chill for a or a harder ice cream.

• When you're ready to serve it, I recommend drizzling an extra dropper or two of the sweet tincture on top of the ice cream, and garnishing with fennel fronds and basil leaves!

Enjoy! And please leave a comment letting us know what you think!