You don’t know this about me, but I’ve mentioned countless times over at Local Loves Nanaimo that I have a love affair with coconut. I also love Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. So when I came across a recipe a friend posted on Facebook for vegan banana cherry ice cream, I thought I’d put a coconut twist to it! I opted to forgo the bananas that the original recipe called for. I also used some of the local cherries I bought from Coombs County Market (I set aside the cherries that looked like they had only a few days left on their shelf life and quartered them then froze them in preparation!

Alrighty! Here’s what you’ll need for this recipe:

• 1 & 1/2 cups of frozen cherries (from your local farm or market!), quartered

• 1/4 cup light coconut milk

• 6 coconut ice cubes

• handful dark chocolate bits

• handful shredded coconut

1. Place coconut ice cubes and coconut milk into blender. Blend until smooth. You may need to scrape the sides of the blender a few times to make sure everything is mixed. Also, if you find it’s a bit difficult to blend, add a bit more coconut milk. But make sure you don’t add too much! You don’t want to be left with runny ice cream.

2. Add one cup of your frozen cherries to blender. Blend until just smooth. You want the mixture a little piece-y but not really chunky!

 3. Once combined, add your remaining cherries, along with your shredded coconut and dark chocolate. Pulse lightly in blender until chunky. I find it helps to stir the mixture in the blender with a spoon first before blending!

4. Now, you can either serve immediately for more of a soft serve ice cream (it may be a bit too runny) or you can freeze for 15 minutes to harden the ice cream up a bit.

And there you go! Easy peasy. A great summer or fall dessert for catching up on So You Think You Can Dance (or some other guilty pleasure of yours!)

If you’d like to try the original recipe with bananas, check it out here.

So what’s your favourite flavour of ice cream? Let us know in the comments!

Sarah and Sean
Local Loves Nanaimo

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