How I Make Frozen Treats With My Vitamix Blender
If you have a Vitamix blender sitting on your kitchen counter right now, you know it can whip up some serious soups , sauces, and nut butters . In fact, my Vitamix’s hot soup function is one of my favorite ways to use it. But it’s almost summer, and I’m not craving soup anymore. Now I’m craving chilled treats. Can my beloved Vitamix Ascent X5 blender go from hot soup to sorbet? Yes, and surprisingly well. Here’s how to make your own frozen dessert in this amazing blender.
Vitamix is not an ice cream maker.
It’s important to note that the Vitamix is a blender, not an ice cream maker. Most ice cream makers have some kind of cooling mechanism (either a refrigerant, a compressor, or a frozen bowl) to keep the mixture cool, while the mixer or auger introduces air—the smaller the air bubbles, the creamier the texture.
The Vitamix doesn’t have a cooling system. The blades create heat, so it uses that and the speed to its advantage. This means you have to work in reverse—add already frozen ingredients to the blender, and it will whisk air into the mixture, breaking up the ingredients. Then all you have to do is freeze the resulting soft texture into a harder state.
As much as I love specialty appliances like the Ninja Slushi ( it’s just so cool ), the Vitamix Ascent X5 Multi-Use Blender really fits the space constraints of my tiny kitchen. I need to do a lot of different things with a few select appliances, and the Vitamix’s frozen dessert capabilities add a whole new category to my home cooking menu. (While the Ascent X5 makes things easier, you can use any Vitamix—I’ll include instructions for those at the end of the article.)
How to Use the Frozen Desserts Feature on Your Vitamix Ascent X5
1. Let’s look at the ingredients.
The most important thing to consider is the ratio of frozen to liquid ingredients. Since this blender does not have a refrigeration system for making frozen desserts, you need to add the coldest ingredients possible, but still have enough liquid to move the frozen ingredients so the blades can grab them.
The Vitamix website calls for 1 cup frozen ingredients to ¼ cup liquid. This amount of liquid, plus some vigorous tamping with a plastic tamper, will produce a thick, smooth consistency that can be consumed immediately or frozen into a firmer, ice cream-like consistency. For my experiment, I used two cups of frozen banana slices and a half cup of sweetened vegan cream. (Sorry, I have a lactose-intolerant Italian partner who would be furious if I used regular heavy cream.) Add everything to the blender container and secure the lid.
2. Select a preset
Turn on the power. Press the burger button with three lines and a row of food icons will appear on the digital display. Use the spinning dial to select the one that looks like a tall, stemmed glass with a pompadour and a small spoon handle.
Prepare a plastic tamper – this part only takes 50 seconds.
3. Mix and compact.
Press the start button. Remove the center plug of the lid and start tamping the ingredients with the tamper. The machine will start at a slower speed and will pick up speed fairly quickly. Your only job is to push the frozen objects down into the blender blades. Once they have all completely disappeared into the mixture, you can finish your tamping session.
4. Look for “quadrants”
Remember when I mentioned making hot soup in this thing? Well, the reason the soup gets hot is because of the heat that’s created by the friction of the blades running at high speed. You want as little of that heat as possible for your frozen dessert. This setting only runs for 50 seconds, but if you see four humps or quadrants forming in the mixture, that’s a good sign that your dessert is completely smooth and ready to blend. It should look like this:
As soon as you see the quadrants, stop the preset, even if there is time left. My mixture was gone after 40 seconds, so I stopped the machine and quickly poured it into a metal loaf pan that I had chilled in the freezer beforehand. I sprinkled chopped chocolate on top and put it in the freezer for a couple of hours to set.
Not only does this frozen dessert go down like a dream, but the texture and flavor are incredible. While it’s not technically ice cream, it eats like ice cream. I was worried it would be rock hard once frozen, but nope – the mixture is well aerated and the consistency is creamy and smooth.
How to Use Vitamix Without Pre-Setting Cold Treats
If you don’t have the Ascent X 5 model, you can still use any Vitamix blender in the same way, you just need to control the speed yourself using the dial. Start on low speed so the blades can grab the ingredients, then increase the speed to high for the next 10 to 15 seconds. Watch for the same quadrants to form, then turn off the blender. Get ready to spend the summer exploring any frozen dessert flavor combinations you can think of.