Ask a Vegan Baker

Hi DonnaD!

I don't recommend using soy milk or any other type of liquid in place of the tofu or cashews in the Vegan Vanilla Ice Cream. This is because it's critical that you have a solid food material as a base in an ice cream recipe. In traditional dairy-based ice cream, milk solids (aka milk protein) provides the base, which results in a creamy texture that slowly melts in your mouth. You can feel it on your tongue as it melts away slowly, which also benefits the taste due to the more drawn out and more consistent flavor release.

If you just used soy milk or another type of non-dairy milk in a vegan ice cream recipe you'd effectively be making ice milk which would be substantially harder. When you take a bite of this ice cream, it would disappear on our tongue and not have much of a feel to it.

Some vegan ice cream companies get around this by loading their ice creams with hydrocolloids which are starches and gums such as tapioca starch, guar gum, locust bean gum and xanthan gum. I try to use these types of ingredients as sparingly as possible in my recipes. They can have a similar effect to other bases because they hold onto large amounts of water. I prefer to use more minimally processed ingredients whenever possible, hence the tofu and cashews.

Good luck!