Dairy-Free Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream
Posted May 06, 2018, Updated Jul 01, 2024
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This dairy-free chocolate peanut butter ice cream is easy to make with 6 nutritious ingredients! It’s rich and creamy, and no one would ever guess that it’s dairy-free!
This recipe goes out to all my lactose-intolerant friends who love ice cream. This dairy-free chocolate peanut butter ice cream is one of my all-time favorite treats. It’s rich and chocolatey with peanut butter chunks in every bite!
So many dairy-free ice cream recipe turn out icy or rock-hard and definitely lack in the creaminess department. But that’s not the case with this recipe.
Using coconut cream instead of other non-dairy milk makes this dairy-free ice cream smooth and creamy and rich.
Dairy-Free Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream: Substitutions & Ingredients
- Peanut Butter: If you are allergic to peanuts you can use any nut or seed butter.
- Honey: Maple syrup can be used in place of honey for a vegan version.
- Coconut cream. Full-fat coconut milk works just as well as coconut cream. I don’t recommend any other substitutions.
How to Make Dairy-Free Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream
Let’s discuss how to make this recipe, and don’t forget to watch the video.
Make the Peanut Butter Chunks
The first thing you need to do is make the frozen peanut butter chunks! Everybody knows that the absolute best chocolate peanut butter ice cream has lots of chunks of peanut butter mixed in.
There have been (many) times that I actually added extra peanut butter balls to store-bought ice cream because there simply wasn’t enough, which is why I prefer homemade ice cream.
I prefer to use pure peanut butter (not add any sugar to it). Simply portion out the desired amount of your favorite peanut butter onto a tray lined with waxed paper. Then freeze it for one hour.
Make the Ice Cream
Once the peanut butter is frozen, add all of the ingredients for the ice cream into the container of your Vitamix and blend until smooth.
Then pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and let it churn! It’s important that (unlike many other recipes) you do not chill the chocolate peanut butter ice cream mixture! It must go directly from the Vitamix into the ice cream maker.
The bowl of your ice cream maker must be frozen in order to churn the ice cream!
Turn on Ice cream maker
Turn the ice cream maker on before you pour the mixture into it. Pouring ice cream into an already moving container ensures that it will not freeze to the bottom or sides, which could hinder the churning process by preventing the machine from rotating.
When your Dairy-Free Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream forms a ball and no longer has a liquid consistency, it is done! At this point it could become so thick that the ice cream maker stops rotating, which is another indicator that it’s ready!
Assemble
Once the ice cream is churned, mix in the peanut butter balls and freeze again.
The peanut butter balls will thaw very rapidly, especially if you use an all-natural variety. This means that you need to mix in the chunks as quickly as possible when you remove them from the freezer.
Either mix the peanut butter balls in by hand, or add them to the ice cream maker before the base forms a ball too solid to add mix-ins .
Freeze/Store
Once the ice cream is finished, freeze it for at least 1 hour before serving. Store in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 3 months.
Serve
You may need to remove it from the freezer for 5 minutes to soften enough to scoop and serve. Serve it with your favorite toppings or plain!
Dairy-Free Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Recipe FAQs
When stored in an airtight container in the freezer it lasts for up to 2 months.
Yes, but you will either need to churn it in two batches or use a larger ice cream maker.
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Dairy-Free Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream
Equipment
Ingredients
Peanut Butter Chunks
- ¼ cup creamy peanut butter
Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream
- 14 ounces coconut cream
- ¼ cup honey (or maple syrup)
- ¼ cup creamy peanut butter
- 2 Tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
Instructions
Make the Peanut Butter Chunks
- Cover an 8×8” baking pan with wax paper. Drop 1 teaspoon spoonfuls of peanut butter onto the waxed paper.
- Put the baking pan in the freezer until the peanut butter is hardened.
Make the Ice Cream
- Add all ice cream ingredients in the order listed to the container of a blender.
- Blend for 30-60 seconds or until the mixtures is smooth.
- Turn on the ice cream maker and pour the mixture into the machine while it is spinning. (**See note below if you do not have an ice cream maker)
- Churn the ice cream for 20-25 minutes until it becomes a firm ball or the ice cream maker stops rotating.
- Add the peanut butter chunks at the end of churning. You can add them to the ice cream maker just before the mixture becomes too hard, or you can mix them in by hand.
- Transfer the ice cream to an airtight, freezer-friendly container and freeze for at least 2 hours, or until completely frozen.
Video
Notes
- Peanut Butter: If you are allergic to peanuts you can use any nut or seed butter.
- Honey: Maple syrup can be used in place of honey for a vegan version.
- Coconut cream. Full-fat coconut milk works just as well as coconut cream. I don’t recommend any other substitutions.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Oh my…amazing! I’ve been busting out dairy free ice cream non-stop since getting my ice cream machine last week and you have blown my mind with this one! It is so rich and creamy. Not one tidbit of icy texture. Thank you! I subbed in cashew butter and cacao instead of cocoa. Simply perfect!!! Tomorrow…vanilla is happening! Yay!
This ice cream is SO delicious. I usually don’t bother with chocolate peanut butter but my daughter convinced me this was the recipe for our ice cream today. I especially loved getting random leaves of peanut butter in the ice cream – we only had crunchy peanut butter and creamy sunflower seed butter – the combo turned out amazing! Thank you!!!!
I have a standard type ice cream maker (metal container with lid, inside a big bucket that you put salt and ice in).
So would I just put the mixture in the container, put the lid on, start it churning, THEN add the ice and salt?
Came out great! I added an extra 2 Tbs of cocoa powder and an extra 1 Tbs of honey. I also substituted sunflower butter for peanut butter, as I mainly eat Paleo. I’m amazed, b/c it actually tastes like it was made with peanut butter. Also, you know that hole in the ice cream maker cover, the one you pour the mixture through? I discovered it has a secondary purpose – when the mixture is getting close to being done, you can put the handle end of a rubber spatula in and scoop out some almost-finished ice cream to eat. I’m sure I ate enough to fill a dessert dish during the last 5-10 minutes of churning :-))) I was enjoying it so much I forgot all about stirring in the sunflower butter blobs from the freezer! They had to go in later. Thanks for an excellent recipe!
So glad you enjoyed it! And thank you for the note about sunbutter!! And that hole is PERFECT for sneaking bites! 🙂
First of all, the recipe is absolutely delicious. I guess it would be difficult to have chocolate peanut butter ice cream that is not delicious.
Anyways, for those who are not trying to make foods without refined sugar, I used 2/3 cup of cane sugar in place of the 1/2 cup of honey. It came out absolutely perfectly. Creamy and yummy, and a bit easier to make.
I’m so glad you love it April! I just made some this week too! Honey is a natural, unrefined sugar too! 🙂
This recipe has just one first place at our house for the best ice cream ever!! Thank you so much!! We have recently had to go dairy-free, and I was anxious about finding good dairy-free ice cream. (The only other one I’d tried was pretty awful.) This was superb. I made a 4x recipe so that we could churn it in the big ice-and-salt type machine, and it was fantastic. Even my husband loved it, and he hates all things coconut. Thank you again!!!
Diana
Thank you Diana!! This is one of my favorite recipes of all time and I’m so glad you love it too!
I’m about to purchase an ice cream maker (2 qt) and wanted to find some great recipes to try. Will this recipe double? Since we’ve gone vegan, my biggest challenge is keeping plenty of ‘good’ munchies and snacks on hand. My husband plows through a batch of homemade Chex mix in only a few days! Just curious whether ingredient measurements would double across the board. Thank you!
Hey Laurie! This recipe fills an ice cream maker that has a 1 1/2 quart capacity bowl. I actually have two bowls that I always keep frozen, so if I need to double the recipe I make half in one bowl, and when it’s done churning I immediately use the second one!
Did anyone have a coconut taste / flavor when they made it? I usually stay away from coconut based cause you end up tasting the coconut but everyone says this is amazing so I wanna try it!
It’s great! I also didn’t like the thought of coconut ice cream, but when I tried it, to my surprise I found out that the chocolate and peanut butter is a perfect way to take down the taste of coconut to just a mere hint of coconut. And the creaminess from the coconut makes it even better than the store bought dairy ice cream I’d been craving.
I made this recipe using the coconut cream from Trader Joe’s, I replaced the honey with confectioners swerve, unfortunately this made the mixture a little thicker and I think it affected the end result. The texture is silky and flavor is delicious. The only reservation I have is the amount of fat and calories from an entire can of coconut cream are a little too high for me to eat regularly.
Hey Liz! Yes using a different sweetener would change the texture of the ice cream for sure! But I’m glad you like it and can enjoy it for a special occasion treat!
Ughhh… so anyone else not realize that coconut cream and cream of coconut are not the same thing?? 🤦🏻♀️