Brighten up your dreary days with this 2-ingredient, no-churn, soft-serve Purple Sweet Potato Ice Cream!
Purple sweet potatoes, or murasaki imo as they’re called in Japanese, are used in many traditional Japanese desserts, and they’ve also become a popular flavour for modern Western-inspired ones. Purple sweet potato ice cream is especially popular in Japan, particularly in soft-serve form.
Purple sweet potatoes are great in desserts because of their interesting colour, and their taste lends itself to desserts much better than regular sweet potatoes, as they have a maple syrup-level of sweetness and an almost perfume-like aroma.
Inspired by the ubiquitous phenomenon of frozen banana soft-serve ice cream, I thought I could easily recreate the magic of the purple sweet potato ice cream I love to eat when I’m on holiday in Japan, in my kitchen in the UK.
And you can forget about ice cream makers – you only need a hand-held stick blender for this, or a food processor or smoothie blender – basically any blending device of your choice!
Basically all you need to do is cook your purple sweet potatoes, freeze them and then blend with any kind of milk or yogurt – coconut milk or yogurt work well.
You can add extra sugar if you want, but I didn’t feel like it was that necessary as the sweet potatoes are already naturally sweet enough. But if you have a sweet tooth, please feel free to add as much sweetener as you like, to taste!
This is a great dessert or healthy snack as it’s so easy to make and also really healthy as it’s basically just blended vegetables, though it doesn’t taste like it at all.
Unlike regular ice cream, it suits a range of dietary requirements as it’s vegan, gluten-free, refined sugar free and even paleo-friendly!
Love purple sweet potatoes as much as I do? Check out my:
If you try out this recipe or anything else from my blog, I’d really love to hear any feedback! Please give it a rating, leave a comment, or tag a photo #rhiansrecipes on Instagram! Thank you.
Helpful tools to make this Purple Sweet Potato Ice Cream:
food processor
blender
hand-held stick blender
Purple Sweet Potato Ice Cream (Vegan + GF)
Ingredients
- 1 medium-sized purple sweet potato (about 200g/7oz)
- 4 tablespoons yogurt/milk/cream of choice – I used coconut yogurt
- Maple syrup, to taste (optional - or sub any other sweetener)
Instructions
- Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into small pieces
- Boil or steam for about 15 minutes, or until soft enough to pierce with a fork
- Drain and mash with a fork
- Once cooled, transfer the mash into a freezer-friendly container and place in freezer until completely frozen
- Place the frozen mash into your blending device of choice along with the yogurt/milk/cream of your choice (and sweetener if you wish)
- Blend until it forms a thick ice-cream-like texture – you will probably have to mix it around a few times during this process to make sure it’s all evenly blended
- Enjoy immediately!
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Alice
What a beautiful colour!
Rhian Williams
Thank you!