Nothing like an ice-cold ice cream float on a hot summer day... but root beer floats (esp. with all their sugar, dairy, and artificial & and unclean ingredients) are just SO heavy and won't leave you feeling energized, refreshed, or cool and won't help you beat the heat. Even vegan & supposedly "healthier" kombucha floats still use actual vegan ice cream which = a lot of extra fat, calories, and sugar that isn't needed and won't make you feel good. Enter: these actually healthy Kombucha Floats. They're made with sugar-free kombucha and nice cream made with 1 ingredient: frozen fruit. That's it. Alright, maybe more if you add the optional superfood powder to color your nice cream virtually any color of the rainbow. And ofc if you use multiple kinds of frozen fruit it's more than 2 ingredients. But the point is: it's still just fruit + kombucha + optional superfood powder. It's literally the ideal healthy kombucha float that will help you keep cool, refreshed & quenched, get the nutrients you need, and make your tastebuds happy. Plus the bright summery colors and burst of flavor make it the superior booch float. Make this healthier kombucha float to health the right way, effervescent style.
Another beverage for your well-being (literally). So I finished my advanced cake decorating course and am a trained velour artist who can make almost any wedding cake! But you know me, there's always another course on the horizon and currently I'm taking a vegan mirror glaze course by the renowned glazing artist Pav Taras of Mirror Glaze Art. Pav is a student of Ksenia Penkina, AKA the Glazing Queen, world-renowned pastry artist, and celebrity who works alongside such pastry chefs as Cédric Grolet and Pierre Hermé! So yeah, I'm taking that glazing course and want to start sharing reels on Insta and also have vids on my website featuring my own glazing art & experiments and other recipe reels. Keep posted for these and more updates!
Btw: have you checked out my Insta yet?? It's @thedimpleddate Check it out for featured recipes from the blog and cakes that I'm selling locally!
Back to these kombucha floats: they are vibrant, fruity, hydrating, and ice-cold in the best of ways to shake off the humidity and bask in the summer sun (or shade, or both). Entirely vegan, paleo, gluten-free, fruit-sweetened, raw, nut-free, coconut-free, and oil-free (really everything-free bc it's just fruit + unsweetened kombucha), these kombucha floats will surprise you with how tasty they are. PLUS they are so, so easy, they're literally 2 ingredients, take 5 minutes to make, and the nice cream is instant, meaning you don't need to freeze it after blending! That's the great thing about nice cream; the fruit is already frozen, so when you blend it, it makes the perfect nice cream consistency. But optionally if you want, you can freeze the nice cream prior to serving in the floats.
So about customizing these floats: there are so many ways to make them. For the nice cream, use frozen mango, frozen dragon fruit AKA pitaya, or frozen açaí puree. Or frozen strawberries. Or frozen cherries. Even just frozen banana. Or any of the above/any combo of these. Or any other kind of frozen fruit- just make sure it's frozen. You can choose to color your nice cream with one or multiple natural superfood powders if you want a different hue. For example, if you make nice cream with just frozen mango, it will be orange/peachy colored, but if you want blue nice cream (+ added health benefits!) add blue spirulina. You can make different portions of the nice cream different colors. You can blend multiple colors to pigment all of the nice cream. Or you can choose to leave your nice cream its natural color. And you can choose to leave some chunks of fruit in the final nice cream or blend till completely smooth.
And the customization doesn't end there! You can use whatever kind of booch (kombucha) your heart desires! Any color, any flavor! But please- if you can't have refined sugar, please ensure your kombucha is fruit-juice-based and has no added sugar, or choose unsweetened kombucha, but if you can have sugar on your diet, then sugar is fine. Try homemade or store-bought, hard booch or non-alcoholic, ice cold or lightly chilled. Or use sparkling grape juice, sparkling water/seltzer, or unsweetened/naturally sweetened soda (e.g. ginger beer) instead of the booch. Or just ditch the sparkling beverage and enjoy the nice cream. Alternatively, try the nice cream in a flute of peach Prosecco or Champagne for a boozy/brunchy option. Cheers! If you can't handle carbonation/bubbling drinks, but you still want the liquid for the true float, try no-sugar-added fruit juice, iced tea or chilled freshly brewed tea, or refined sugar free lemonade. Customize to your heart's content!
And here is a fun idea: if you came here fully expecting true vegan ice cream (not nice cream), try a scoop of any of my vegan, refined sugar free, and natural ice creams (we're talking creamy, sweet, coconut-milk-based, gelato-esque ice creams) in a glass of the booch! I especially think my fruit-sweetened Peaches & Cream Ice Cream or cherry ice cream from my Barbie Mochi Ice Cream recipe would go especially well in these floats and keep them fruit-sweetened. But my Healthy Spumoni Ice Cream would also go great, as would my Pineapple Inside Out Ice Cream, or even my Healthy "Butterbeer" Ice Cream (it would go well with unflavored/"pure" kombucha for a "Butterbeer" float sort of thing!!). My Watermelon Granita/Italian Ice would go great as well, but again this would be more of a nice cream compared to all the Dimpled Date ice creams I just mentioned. The only two ice creams/nice creams on The Dimpled Date I wouldn't recommend using in a kombucha float are my coffee and cookies ice cream from my Date-Sweetened Affogato recipe and my Healthy Butter Pecan Ice Cream, but that certainly doesn't mean you can't try it!
Substitutions
I think it's pretty clear what the Substitutions are because I just mentioned them in the paragraph above (before the two above pictures). You can use any kind of frozen fruit for the nice cream, the superfood color is optional, if you want you can use vegan ice cream instead of fruit-based nice cream, and I offered suggestions for what to use instead of kombucha and types of booch that can be used. I also mentioned that you don't have to have this recipe as a float, and you can instead just enjoy the nice cream on its own. But nonetheless, true to The Dimpled Date and my policy of providing a substitution for every ingredient for almost every recipe, I will elaborate on more ingredient swaps you can make here.
Instead of the frozen fruits, try cooked and cubed frozen Japanese sweet potato or orange sweet potato OR frozen corn kernels (if you do this, I recommend adding at least a little frozen banana too OR 1 to 2 Tbsp maple syrup, agave, honey, etc.). You can also use your own fresh fruit and freeze it for at least 8 hours or overnight prior to making this recipe. Also, you can just use the frozen fruit and add a little pure maple syrup, agave nectar, coconut nectar, honey (if not strictly vegan), OR yacon syrup to make it sweeter. Start with 1 Tbsp of these sweeteners and add additional 1 Tbsp at a time to taste. The lime juice is perfectly optional and just makes the fruit flavor a little brighter, but you can use lemon juice, freshly squeezed orange juice, OR even fresh grapefruit juice instead.
For coloring the nice cream naturally, you can use any superfood color powder OR natural/vegan/GF/sugar-free food coloring of choice. For the kombucha, I already gave plentiful substitutes, but for some additional suggestions I offer the following: instead of booch, try coconut water, sparkling/regular cider (hard or virgin), or water kefir.
Customize as desired. You can add any additional flavors (in the form of spices, extracts, nut butters, stir-ins, etc.) to the nice cream, and the liquid can be anything or any combination of drinks. Customize it up!
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Enjoy!
-K.
Healthy Kombucha Floats | (Raw, Vegan, Paleo, Fruit-Sweetened, Natural, Nut-Free, Superfood- & Probiotic-Rich!)
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 0 minutes
Total Time: 5 minutes
Servings: 2
Ingredients (nice cream):
1 1/2 cups frozen mango OR frozen strawberries OR frozen cherries OR frozen banana OR frozen fruit of choice (can use any combo of frozen fruit // just make sure it's frozen with no added sweeteners // I used 1 cup frozen mango + 1/2 cup frozen dragon fruit açaí mixture)
1/2 frozen banana (optional, but highly recommended for additional sweetness, if you use one of the frozen fruits above)
1 Tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice (optional // can sub freshly squeezed lemon juice OR orange juice)
For the optional superfood colorant for the nice cream, pick one or more of the following superfood powders (or omit for a natural fruity hue):
1/8 tsp to 1/2 tsp green spirulina powder (teal)
1/4 to 1/2 tsp blue spirulina powder (blue)
1/8 tsp to 1/2 tsp ground turmeric (yellow)
1 tsp red dragon fruit powder AKA pink pitaya powder (pink)
1 tsp purple sweet potato powder OR 1 tsp maqui berry powder (purple)
1/4 tsp to 1/2 tsp matcha green tea powder (light green)
1/8 tsp to 1/2 tsp beet powder (red)
1/4 tsp to 1 tsp dunaliella salina powder OR a little beet powder + a little turmeric (orange)
1 tsp cacao powder OR carob powder (tan/ brown // this flavor would go great with a cherry-based nice cream + strawberry booch!)
pinch to 1/8 tsp activated coconut charcoal (grey/black // note that activated charcoal can inhibit nutrient absorption but is used for detox // for 100% nut-free/coconut-free try activated hardwood charcoal or activated bamboo charcoal, which are perfectly edible & food-grade)
for white, try using frozen bananas as the base + 1 tsp to 1 Tbsp unsweetened dry coconut milk powder, plus more as needed OR unsweetened dry plant milk powder of choice (such as unsweet oat milk powder // note that this will add creaminess, but reduce the sweetness of the fruit) (white)
For serving:
2 cups (1 cup per float) no-sugar-added fruit juice-based kombucha of choice (any color, any flavor // make sure it's all-natural, gluten-free, and vegan too, such as GT's Synergy line of kombuchas // homemade or store-bought works perfectly // I used lemon berry [red] and guava [pink])*
Directions:
1. Add frozen fruit(s), optional lime juice, and optional superfood powder color(s) to a food processor or high-speed blender like a Vitamix. Blend on high until it forms a creamy nice cream/sorbet-like consistency. Scrape down the sides and re-blend as necessary. Blend less to leave a couple small chunks of frozen fruit in the final nice cream. It should be the perfect frozen sorbet consistency, but if you want your nice cream harder/firmer, pop in the freezer at least 15 minutes.
2. Pour 1 cup of kombucha(s) of choice into a tall glass for each float.
3. Scoop 1 to 2 scoops of the nice cream into each float. Add desired garnishes and boba/smoothie straws if you wish. Stir if desired.
4. Sip for a vibrant, nutritious, and tasty summer treat that's low-sugar, fat-free, probiotic-rich, and oh-so-refreshing and fruity! Enjoy!
Drink immediately (within 30 minutes). Does not keep in the long-term. Do not try to refrigerate and save for later.
NOTES:
*TECHNICALLY you can use hard kombucha for a boozy option, but I recommend just using regular kombucha because it's already so healthy and you can't get super buzzed off of hard booch anyway. See the "Substitutions" section of this post and the paragraphs above it for alternatives and different nice cream bases and liquids for these floats
FYI: You're going to want to drink it relatively quickly (within 20 minutes) because adding pureed fruit to kombucha is enough to activate the fermentation process which = more yeast formation + more alcohol production. Not that it will likely get to high levels by the time you finish it, but definitely something to keep in mind for kiddos and those who don't drink. Also: if you have a Candida gut infection (like me), I highly recommend using a smaller glass for a smaller float (use 1/2 cup kombucha), so you can drink it within 10 to 15 minutes (allowing yourself time to digest) without allowing the kombucha time to form more yeast. The good thing about these floats is that they contain zero refined sugar, only natural fruit sugars and even the kombucha is only based on fruit juice, so if you can tolerate kombucha, this is a great option for people with a Candida overgrowth.
ALSO: Please note that all kombucha, even non-alcoholic, contains small amounts of natural alcohol from the fermentation process required to make the booch and produce probiotics. Regular kombucha is extremely healthy though, and contains a lot of good nutrients like those probiotics.
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