Why no chocolate ice cream yet?

Someone asked me why I haven’t posted any chocolate ice creams yet. The reason is that making a low carb chocolate ice cream has been kicking my ass! I’ve made a chocolate macadamia nut ice cream (made two different ways) that was good, but not great. I’ve experimented with a chocolate ice cream with almond butter chunks that turned out great, but I didn’t feel the chocolate ice cream part was up to snuff. The good news is that I’m confident enough to announce that I’ve cracked it!

Low Carb Marshmallows

Sugar free marshmallows are very easy to make and are practically carbohydrate, fat, and calorie free. I based my recipe on the one from Linda’s Low Carb Menus & Recipes website. The ingredients are essentially the same, but I optimized the directions.

The misguided ambition of nutrition science

I’ve written previously about the myth of the scientific method and experimental evidence vs. quantitative theory. In the latter article, I identified what I believe is a problem with contemporary nutrition science: transitioning from experimental evidence to quantitative analysis. If nutrition were like physics and theories could be accurately expressed in mathematical terms, then perhaps this would be appropriate. The gravitational force of a distant planet, which no human has ever set foot, can be confidently determined by Newton’s law of universal gravitation. Conversely, it’s for all intents and purposes impossible to accurately predict the weight loss or gain of an individual even when all known aspects of its food intake and energy expenditure are accounted. Instead of formulas, modern nutrition science relies on statistics that beget correlations that get elevated to the status of “natural laws” within the field.

Experimental evidence vs. quantitative theory

I wrote previously about the myth of the scientific method as it pertains to the realities of scientific endeavors. The perception of science and scientific research by the non-scientific community is that of a sterile Vulcan-like endeavor completely divorced from emotion and humanity.

Low Carb Cake Batter Ice Cream with Frosting Bombs

Cake batter is a relatively new flavor that’s become a staple in many ice cream shops. It’s extremely easy to make since it’s just a sweet cream base plus white or yellow cake mix. Rainbow sprinkles or similar cake decoration candies are usually thrown in for color, added texture, and flavor. As you can probably guess, that’s not going to work for a low carb recipe. Replacing the cake batter is simple to fix. LorAnn Oils sells cake batter ice vream flavoring. I couldn’t find any ready-made rainbow sprinkles that were low carb. I did find one or two recipes to make them, but it looks like too much trouble. Instead, I decided to throw colored frosting in the mix. The frosting is based on my Oreo ice cream adventure. The key to good frosting is to not use granular sweeteners. Powdered erythritol and liquid sucralose (EZ-Sweetz), but no Truvia. These little frosting bombs are very sweet, but remember, they need to be since they’re going to be frozen. The most difficult obstacle I ran into was getting them into some kind of shape I could work with. Vegetable shortening is smooth and creamy and can’t be rolled into clumps. The way I eventually solved this problem is to use the peanut butter cup molds from the Chocolate Almond Butter Bombs recipe. Fill, freeze solid, and then pop them out while frozen, cut up, and mix in the ice cream. Because the primary sweetener is different from the ice cream, their flavor really stands out.

The Myth of the Scientific Method

I referenced Tom Naughton’s excellent presentation “Science for Smart People” in my “What makes a scientist?” post. He calls out the steps of the scientific method to describe the difference between data from an observational study vs. a controlled double-blind experiment. He rightly chastises scientists for not following the scientific method and relying on incomplete observations to determine what is scientific fact. All good science should be done orderly, carefully, and reproducibly. That’s how every important advance in science has been conducted, right? No, not really.