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Dairy Free Pumpkin Ice Cream

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When it’s pumpkin season but you still want a cool treat, make some Dairy Free Pumpkin Ice Cream! Our recipe is creamy and smooth and delicious, your friends will never guess it’s allergy friendly and paleo.

photo collage of black bowl with pumpkin ice cream

Hey friends! We’re in that early time of fall when it’s still warm outside during the day and cool in the mornings and evenings. If you’re craving all things pumpkin spice but still want a cool treat for warm days, we’ve got some Pumpkin Ice Cream for you!

Our pumpkin spice ice cream is perfectly spiced, smooth, and creamy. It’s also naturally sweetened, paleo, and vegan so it fits many special diets!

This ice cream tastes great by itself or topped with chocolate sprinkles or fudge sauce (our chocolate ganache would work great). You can also top this with some crumbled pumpkin snickerdoodles, too, for a fun twist!

black metal bowl filled with pumpkin pie ice cream

This pumpkin ice cream recipe is:

  • Paleo & grain free
  • Dairy free
  • Egg free
  • Vegan
  • Gluten free
  • Peanut free
  • Tree nut free (except coconut)

How to make pumpkin ice cream

Here are the steps for making our pumpkin spice ice cream (the full recipe card is at the bottom of the post):

  1. In a large bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, pumpkin puree, spices, salt, and vanilla.
  2. Add in the canned coconut milk, whisking as you add until everything is mixed and smooth (this helps the pumpkin blend in smoothly with the coconut milk).
  3. Turn on your ice cream maker then add the pumpkin mixture to the ice cream maker (make sure the ice cream maker is turned on before you start adding the pumpkin cream!).
  4. Churn the ice cream for about 20 minutes until you reach the consistency of ice cream you want. If you started with room temperature ingredients, it’s about 20 minutes. It will take less time with chilled ingredients.
  5. Serve immediately or scoop into an airtight and freezer-proof container and freeze for later.
  6. If you freeze this for later, you can pop the container in the microwave to soften it a bit for scooping.
  7. Note that we don’t recommend storing your ice cream in the churning container (most brands of ice cream makers don’t recommend doing this either).
overhead photo of dairy free ice cream in an ice cream maker bowl

Tips for making our dairy free pumpkin ice cream

Chilling the ingredients beforehand is optional and not required (we usually don’t chill the ingredients beforehand), but it does make the churning go faster. Also if you have an older ice cream maker that doesn’t freeze as well, it helps to chill the ingredients ahead of time to make the churning more efficient.

We don’t have to do this with our new ice cream maker, but our old Hamilton Beach ice cream churn couldn’t seem to freeze a full batch of ice cream at all so we usually had to pre-chill the ingredients.

To prevent the ice cream from freezing very hard, you can also add 1 Tablespoon of vodka to the ice cream at the end of churning to help prevent the ice cream from getting too hard in the freezer.

We have a double-churn soft serve machine that creates creamy ice cream and we don’t have to add vodka to our batches anymore, but we did in the past with our older ice cream maker (which was a Hamilton Beach one).

black bowl filled with paleo pumpkin ice cream

I used canned pumpkin puree in this recipe, but you can use a homemade pumpkin puree if you want. Just make sure that your homemade puree is strained so it’s nice and thick like the canned puree for the smoothest ice cream.

Can I replace the coconut milk in this recipe with something else?

If you can’t have coconut and want to try something different in this recipe instead, you can try using a thick and creamy oat milk or a thick dairy free creamer (like almond creamer if you can have that) instead of the canned coconut milk.

The full fat coconut milk gives this recipe enough fat to create a creamy ice cream, so using a lower fat milk alternative in place of coconut milk might result in a slightly less creamy pumpkin ice cream.

But you can still make that swap if you need to and have great ice cream, just make sure to use an ice cream maker to get a creamy result.

The Silk heavy cream and Silk half and half both work great in ice cream recipes (we used them in our chocolate Oreo ice cream), but they do contain coconut, so it’s not a good swap if you have coconut allergies.

If you don’t have coconut allergies, those products are fantastic in ice cream recipes and have less of a coconut taste to them!

overhead photo of glass loaf pan filled with ice cream and a scoop

Can I make this ice cream sugar free?

Yes! You can make this pumpkin ice cream sugar free and keto by swapping the maple syrup for a liquid sweetener that is sugar free. Here are some more natural options you can try (please note that we haven’t tested these in our recipe but they should work fine in this pumpkin ice cream):

Just watch the type of liquid sweetener you use if you have IBS since sugar alcohols can be problematic, like erythritol in the Lakanto syrup. Allulose is supposed to be safe for people with IBS so it’s worth a try if you can’t have sugar alcohols.

bowl of pumpkin spice ice cream on a wooden board

Check out our other pumpkin spice recipes:

Dairy Free Pumpkin Ice Cream (Paleo)

When it's pumpkin season but you still want a cool treat, make some Dairy Free Pumpkin Ice Cream! Our recipe is creamy and smooth and delicious, your friends will never guess it's allergy friendly and paleo, too.
Dairy free, vegan, gluten free; Free of: soy, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts (except coconut)
4.78 from 9 votes
Print Pin Rate
Course: Frozen Desserts
Cuisine: American
Keyword: dairy free pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin ice cream, vegan pumpkin ice cream
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Churning time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 25 minutes
Servings: 6 servings
Calories: 267kcal

Ingredients

Instructions

  • In a large bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, pumpkin puree, spices, salt, and vanilla. Chilling the ingredients beforehand is optional and not required, but it makes the churning go faster if they are chilled ahead of time.
  • Add in the canned coconut milk, whisking as you add until everything is mixed and smooth.
  • Turn on your ice cream maker then add the pumpkin mixture to the ice cream maker (make sure the ice cream maker is turned on before you start adding the pumpkin cream!).
  • Churn the ice cream for about 20 minutes until you reach the consistency of ice cream you want. If you started with room temperature ingredients, it's about 20 minutes. It will take less time with chilled ingredients.
  • Serve immediately or scoop into an airtight and freezer-proof container and freeze for later.
  • If you freeze this for later, we usually microwave the dish we store the ice cream in to soften it a bit for scooping (it's not recommended to store your ice cream in the churn container).

Notes

To prevent the ice cream from freezing very hard, you can add 1 Tablespoon of vodka to the ice cream at the end of churning to help prevent the ice cream from getting too hard in the freezer. We have a double-churn soft serve machine that creates creamy ice cream and we don’t have to add vodka. 

Nutrition

Serving: 0.5cup | Calories: 267kcal | Carbohydrates: 25g | Protein: 2g | Fat: 19g | Saturated Fat: 17g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 1g | Sodium: 16mg | Potassium: 316mg | Fiber: 3g | Sugar: 20g | Vitamin A: 3179IU | Vitamin C: 3mg | Calcium: 52mg | Iron: 2mg
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