One of the things I miss the most about our old life, the one before coronavirus, is going out for ice cream on the first warm days of spring. We are—were—fortunate to have two wonderful options within a couple of blocks of our house. The first, MilkMade, closed last fall, and I miss the little storefront with the pepto-colored trim and the innovative flavors like Haunted Hayride, Mango sticky rice, and Key Lime Pie (my favorite). All the ice creams were spun right there in the back, and on a hot summer night a tight queue of happy, sweaty families stretched halfway around the block. Remember tight queues?

Right across the street from the former MilkMade is Farmacy, which is temporarily closed. When we first moved to this neighborhood the space was a creepy, abandoned drugstore whose windows we used to peer through, speculating on what the story was there. It was littered with dust bunnies and weathered pharmaceutical products someone had just walked away from one day and never looked back. Luckily, some fine folks rescued and turned it into an old-fashioned soda fountain, its tiled floors and old pill cabinets beautifully preserved, a countertop with swivel stools where you can perch and watch the soda jerks work their magic with the shiny chrome equipment. We would pop in with the kids to get one of their creative sodas or sundaes, like the Pink Poodle or Sir Twix-a-Lot. We grownups liked to drown our afternoon slump in an affogato. I hope those days will be back soon.  

This weekend, the time was right for some ice cream, so I got my clunky old ice cream maker down. It’s heavy and it takes up too much cabinet real estate, but it has its own compressor so you don’t have to freeze a canister and if you really wanted to you could spin quart after quart, all day long. For our 2020 inaugural run I used up some mangos that were wrinkling in the fruit bowl. Those smaller, sweeter yellow mangoes called Ataulfo or Champagne mangos seem to be plentiful in the markets right now, and we had gotten a deal on a case of them. After the kids tired of having mango “hedgehogs” for breakfast I had to find a way to use the rest.

I developed a vegan mango ice cream with a slight hint of cardamom since I love that flavor and happen to have a fresh batch of cardamom. It gets its creaminess from coconut milk (I used the canned, unsweetened organic kind. You can get it without guar gum if that bothers you). A note on sugar and sweetening: the amount I specify in this recipe is low. That is because our mangos were super ripe and sweet, and I have been trying to go light on sugar in general. I would advise tasting your blend and deciding what works—and you can also experiment with alternative sweeteners like coconut sugar.  It’s so good! My family voted thumbs up and my daughter Cece said I should definitely put the recipe up here. Note: If you don’t have a machine I’ve included an alternative freezing method. Won’t be 100% the same but still delicious. You can also check out my all time favorite ice cream recipe, fresh mint leaf/chocolate chip, here or at its old blog home here.

Vegan Mango Cardamom Ice “Cream”

Ingredients:

• 3 lbs very ripe whole mangos, preferably the smaller yellow Ataulfo aka Champagne mangos (around 5 of them)

• 1/4 cup sugar — more or less to taste

• juice of 1/2 lime

• 1/4 tsp. ground cardamom

• pinch salt

• 1 cup unsweetened coconut milk

Instructions:

1. Slice mango away from the pit on each side. Scoop the fruit out of the skins. Cut all the mango fruit you possibly can away from the pit, avoiding the hairy fibrous part close to the pit. Repeat this with all the mangos, discarding skins and pits.

2. Put mango and all other ingredients in a blender and blend thoroughly until super smooth. Taste and add more sugar if needed—all mangos are different so sweeten accordingly! Chill mixture until quite cold.

3. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, freeze in a shallow container, going in every 20 minutes or so to stir and scrape with a fork, outer edges to center, until you’ve reached the consistency you like.