My youngest is home from a fabulous day of summer camp at one of our local farms. Sunflower Farm has it all from hay bale maze, to zip lines, to ponies, to cherry pickin'. The fun is non-stop. Needless to say little V is covered in dirty farm happiness and in need of some serious down time this afternoon.

So this afternoon found us quietly rambling in the yard harvesting a bit of our freshly growing chocolate mint. It is so yummy and vivacious with dark green leaves and chocolate colored square stems. I love having this plant growing in our yard. We took our mint inside to create our first ice cream of the season. I love making frozen desserts with my kids using healthy ingredients!

Ingredients ~

16 oz of cream or milk, we used cream from grass-fed cows but coconut milk would be wonderful too!
1/4 to 1/3 cup of fresh chocolate mint
1/4 to 1/3 cup of honey or whole sugar (we used sucanat for this batch)
the seeds scraped from half a vanilla bean pod and/or 1 to 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

Directions ~

Wash the mint and remove any stems. Place the mint, sweetener and vanilla in a blender and grind everything together for a few minutes. The add the cream/milk and blend until everything is combined very well. Taste the resulting mixture to make sure everything is delicious, make adjustments if necessary. Then dump the liquid into an ice cream maker and freeze following manufacture directions. My kids and another child from the neighborhood couldn't get enough of this stuff. A super yummy summer treat!