Mango Sticky Rice Ice Cream
Ripe mango and coconut ice cream with a bright lime edge and tender coconut sticky rice folded through after spinning.
A real batch exists; refinement is still in progress.
Ingredients
Tap ingredients as you weigh them.
Mango-coconut base
Coconut sticky rice, prepared on processing day
The small print names the exact — often Dutch — products this recipe was calculated with. Equivalents work, but if a label differs materially, the formula deserves a recalculation.
Prepare
Choose the mango
Taste the mango before starting. It should be soft, highly aromatic, and delicious on its own. A pale, fibrous, tart, or weakly flavored mango will make equally weak ice cream. If using fruit pieces, purée them completely smooth before continuing.
Disperse the dry ingredients
In a completely dry bowl, thoroughly combine the sugar, dextrose, glutinous rice flour, 0.2 g guar, and 0.4 g salt. Break up every visible lump and make sure the tiny guar quantity is evenly diluted before it touches liquid.
Cook the rice-flour body
Shake both coconut products until uniform. Put the 70 g coconut milk and 60 g coconut cream in a small saucepan and gradually whisk in the dry mixture. Heat over medium-low heat, stirring and scraping continuously, until the base reaches 82-85°C and lightly thickens. Hold it in that range for 1 minute while stirring so the rice flour fully cooks; do not let it boil aggressively.
Add the fruit and cool
Remove the pan from the heat. Add the mango and lime juice, then immersion-blend for 45-60 seconds until completely smooth, keeping the blade submerged to avoid foam. Transfer to a clean container and cool promptly over an ice bath. Do not put a warm base into the freezer.
Taste and age
Taste the cold base. It should read first as ripe mango, then coconut, and be slightly sweeter and brighter than the intended frozen dessert without an obvious flour or gum flavor. Cover and refrigerate for 4-12 hours. Blend briefly if the chilled base has set unevenly or separated.
Fill and freeze
Pour the approximately 404.6 g base into the NC300EU pint. Confirm it remains below the molded MAX FILL line with obvious headroom for approximately 44 g sticky rice, fit the storage lid, and freeze on a level surface for at least 24 hours.
Soak and steam the sticky rice
On processing day, rinse the 16 g glutinous rice until the water is mostly clear, soak it in plenty of cool water for 4-8 hours, then drain very well. Steam it in a small parchment-lined steamer basket or fine-mesh sieve over simmering water for 18-25 minutes, turning once, until every grain is translucent, tender, and chewy with no hard core.
Season and chill the sticky rice safely
While the rice steams, warm the 12 g coconut milk with the 4 g sugar and 0.1 g salt just until dissolved. Weigh 28 g hot cooked rice into a clean shallow bowl; reserve any excess for another use. Fold in the warm coconut mixture, cover for 10 minutes, then spread the rice thinly in the bowl and cool it promptly over an ice bath. Cover and refrigerate at 4°C or colder; use within 24 hours. The finished addition weighs approximately 44.1 g.
Spin and finish
Process the frozen base according to the spin instructions. When it is creamy, use a chilled spoon or stiff spatula to fold the approximately 44.1 g cold coconut sticky rice through the ice cream in two or three additions. Do this by hand rather than using Mix-In so the soft rice remains distinct. Keep the finished dessert below the molded MAX FILL line; if the actual pint runs out of headroom, stop adding rice and spoon the remainder over each serving. Stop and serve as soon as the rice is evenly distributed.
Spin plan
Confirm the frozen surface is level, there is no tall hard hump, the pint remains below MAX FILL, and the base is within -12°C to -25°C. Keep the prepared sticky rice refrigerated until the base is creamy.
Run Lite Ice Cream once.
If creamy, stop and fold in the chilled sticky rice by hand. If safely powdery or crumbly, scrape the sides inward and RE-SPIN once without automatically adding liquid, then fold in the rice. If too soft, do not keep spinning; refreeze the base without the rice until firmer.
Smooth leftovers flat before refreezing. When hard, rerun Lite Ice Cream rather than RE-SPIN. A new main cycle will pulverize the rice, so the texture will be more uniform; refreeze behavior has not yet been tested.
Notebook
Design brief
- Machine and container: Ninja CREAMi NC300EU, one standard 473 ml pint.
- Target: ripe-mango-forward vegan ice cream with clear coconut flavor and distinct, tender sticky-rice grains; dense and creamy rather than airy.
- Serving plan: eat immediately after folding in the chilled rice. The formula is not claimed to remain scoopable after a full refreeze.
- Assumed freezer: approximately -18°C, with a level freeze of at least 24 hours and a processable base temperature within -12°C to -25°C.
- Constraints: dairy-free, egg-free, alcohol-free, no high-intensity sweetener, and every published amount measurable on a 0.1 g scale.
- Specialty ingredients accepted by design: dextrose, glutinous rice flour, and a small measured guar dose.
- Main test variable: mango variety and ripeness. A less-sweet mango will make the block harder and the finished dessert less sweet, while a very sweet pulp can push the result softer.
Development notes
This formula takes the flavor architecture of Thai mango sticky rice—ripe mango, coconut, glutinous rice, sugar, salt, and a small bright accent—and adapts each part to the NC300EU rather than freezing the plated dessert as-is. The frozen block is a smooth mango-coconut base with cooked glutinous-rice flour for body. The actual rice is prepared separately and folded in only after a successful main spin, which avoids a dense frozen rice layer and preserves more of the characteristic chew than the machine’s Mix-In program would.
The coconut products are locked to current Go-Tan Kokosmelk and Kara UHT Coconut Cream labels. Representative mango sugar fractions come from USDA data summarized in this mango-composition review. The sticky-rice cooling and storage instruction is deliberately conservative and follows the Food Standards Agency’s cooked-rice guidance.
Test notes
2026-08-06 — partial first physical test
The mango-coconut base tasted okay but was underwhelming and earned a provisional personal taste rating of 3/5. The separate sticky-rice component was not made or folded in, so the defining contrast and the complete recipe have not yet been tested. Keep the recipe in testing and make the rice as written before deciding whether the base itself needs revision.
- Mango variety, brand, and label sugar:
- Coconut-product labels confirmed:
- Freezer temperature:
- Frozen-base temperature before processing:
- First-spin texture:
- RE-SPIN required:
- Mango intensity: Okay; the overall base was underwhelming
- Coconut intensity:
- Sweetness and lime balance:
- Rice tenderness before folding: Not tested; rice was omitted
- Rice distribution and chew after folding: Not tested; rice was omitted
- Starchiness or gumminess:
- Sidewall ice:
- Melt and immediate serving texture:
- Refreeze result:
- Changes for the next batch: Make and fold in the chilled coconut sticky rice as written, then reassess the complete dessert before changing the base formula
Formula details PAC, POD, and solids for the curious
- Convention
- Sucrose = 1; base calculation includes added sucrose, dextrose, estimated mango and lime sugars, coconut-product sugars modeled as sucrose, and all base salt
- PAC
- 28.6
- POD
- 19.6
- Total solids
- 31.6%
- Fat
- 6.9%
- Protein
- 1.1%
- Formula values describe only the approximately 404.6 g frozen base. The approximately 44.1 g sticky-rice finish is folded in after processing and is included in the displayed nutrition, not in the frozen-block PAC, POD, or composition percentages.
- PAC models representative ripe mango as 6.97% sucrose, 4.68% fructose, and 2.01% glucose; coconut-product sugars are provisionally modeled as sucrose because their labels do not disclose sugar type. It uses FPDF 1.0 for sucrose, 1.9 for fructose, glucose, and dextrose monohydrate, and 5.9 for sodium chloride.
- POD uses sucrose 1.0, fructose 1.7, and glucose and dextrose 0.75. Actual mango composition can move both PAC and sweetness materially.
- Excluding all sodium chloride, modeled base PAC is approximately 27.9. The PAC and POD are intentionally balanced for a lean fruit-coconut base processed on Lite Ice Cream from an approximately -18°C freezer.
- The 0.2 g added guar is approximately 0.05% of the base. Go-Tan also supplies an undisclosed amount of guar, while Kara supplies undisclosed guar and xanthan, so total active hydrocolloid percentage cannot be known exactly from the labels.
- Glutinous rice flour supplies cooked starch, body, and the flavor bridge to the sticky-rice finish. The base's 31.6% total solids is below a conventional low-fat dairy starting range, but mango fiber and pectin, gelatinized rice starch, coconut solids, and the restrained gum system also manage water and texture.
- Coconut fat is highly solid at freezer temperature and can make the base behave harder than PAC alone predicts. Lite Ice Cream is used because this is a lean, fruit-forward plant base.
- Nutrition is an estimate for the complete finished pint, using representative USDA mango and glutinous-rice values plus the current Go-Tan and Kara labels. Product substitutions and a different cooked-rice yield require recalculation.
- The first physical test covered only the mango-coconut base. It tasted okay but underwhelming; the separate sticky-rice component was not made, so rice distribution and the complete flavor balance remain untested.