Low Carb Parmigiano-Reggiano Ice Cream with Dark Chocolate Parmesan Chips

Parmesan and dark chocolate make a good food paring or so they say. I’ve got enough experience making ice creams with cheese that I was confident I could pull this one off.

Low Carb Almond Poppy Seed Ice Cream

This is another flavor inspired by Snoqualmie Ice Cream. I obviously was unable to try the original, but the ingredients listed on the website make it pretty clear that it’s vanilla ice cream with almond extract and poppy seeds.

Low Carb “Old Fashioned” Pumpkin Ice Cream II - The Pumpkining

I consider my first attempt at pumpkin ice cream an abject failure. It wasn’t bursting with flavor as I had hoped. I had better results using pumpkin ice cream flavoring, but it still bothered me that I couldn’t make a “proper” pumpkin ice cream. A reader left a comment on that original blog entry that inspired me to give this another try and I’m super happy that I did. This version is outstanding! Please disregard the previous one.

Low Carb Spicy Banana Brownie Ice Cream

I stumbled on this flavor combination thanks to Snoqualmie Ice Cream. The “spicy” in the name isn’t referring to peppers. It’s cinnamon. I decided to use real cinnamon in my low carb conversion due to the uneven results with cinnamon ice cream flavorings that I’ve obtained recently. Therefore, you must use a cooked ice cream base. The instructions below specifically use my Philadelphia-style base because that’s the only way I attempted it. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to attempt a French-style custard base version of this flavor. The main difference will probably the amount of flavorings.

Alarm monitoring without the central station

My county’s police force is tired of responding to false alarms. They now require a $50 per year registration fee and will fine the homeowner $100 for each false alarm. How they determine a false alarm is highly dubious. Imagine a burglar attempts to gain entry though a door or window in your backyard but gets scared away from your alarm’s siren. The cops get called to the home by the central monitoring agency, but there’s no demonstrable evidence of a break-in like broken glass or a damaged door jam. “It must have been a false alarm,” the police will surmise. Ding! Pay $100. Actual break-in attempts are rare, so I can no longer allow my alarm monitoring service to automatically dispatch the police. What’s the point of even having central monitoring if I’m too afraid to have the police sent to my home? Quite frankly, the monitoring service is an anachronism. Most people carry cell phones pretty much anywhere they go. A simple text message or e-mail sent from the alarm system would obviate the need for central monitoring altogether. Alas, my alarm system is an older model that does not have that capability. Fortunately, I’ve come up with an inexpensive way to add it.

Low Carb Scotchy Scotch Scotch Ice Cream

The inspiration for this flavor was thanks to a limited edition Ben & Jerry’s ice cream by the same name. It’s butterscotch ice cream with a swirl of butterscotch variegate. Sounds delicious, but it’s certainly not low carb. No worries, Ron. I can fix that for you.

Low Carb Bangkok Peanut Ice Cream

I found this ice cream recipe from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams. It was included in her book and checked off all the boxes for a low carb conversion.

Jeni explains her inspiration for this ice cream:

For years, there was a rivalry in the North Market about who had the best pad Thai. One shop’s sign said “Best Pad Thai in the Market,” which was answered with another shop’s “Best Pad Thai in Columbus.” One of the battling merchants was a young Thai woman named Nida. Hers was everything pad Thai should be: fresh and light, exquisitely spiced, and slightly sweet with layers and layers of flavor.

As the debate heated up, I decided to throw my hat in the ring. Using locally produced all-natural peanut butter, ground toasted coconut, and cayenne pepper, I created Bangkok Peanut Ice Cream and, with tongue firmly in cheek, touted it as the “Best Pad Thai in the World!”

For more authentic flavor and a lighter finish, add a bruised lemongrass stalk and 4 “coins” of ginger during the boiling stage, then remove before whisking in the cornstarch slurry.*

* Jeni’s sweet cream base uses cornstarch since it binds water molecules. Making ice cream is much easier when you don’t have to worry about excess carbohydrates.

Bluetooth music for older car stereos

I have a ten year old car with a stock stereo system. It includes hands free calling using Bluetooth, but it does not support music being piped into the system that way. Instead, it has a set of RCA audio and video jacks and a 12V cigarette lighter port hidden in the center front armrest. It seems like a poor design, but the intent of this auxiliary input was for a portable DVD player. I guess they thought there would be a big demand to play movies on the navigation screen when the vehicle is parked. (The video is disabled when driving, but the audio continues to work.)

Low Carb Lemon Almond Crème Fraîche Ice Cream

This recipe was inspired by Lindsay Clendaniel from a recipe on her blog. She uses a mixture of heavy cream and sour cream with lemon zest and almond extract. I decided this was a perfect opportunity to try making an ice cream using crème fraîche instead. Crème fraîche has a higher fat content, is thicker, has a richer flavor, and is less tangy than sour cream. I also added sliced almonds at the end of the churn, because...well, why the heck not?

Low Carb Nutella

Nutella is extremely popular in Europe, but has many fans in the USA, too. There are a few low carb Nutella clones available for purchase. All the ones that I’ve tried were terrible. I know I can do better.

Ice Cream Junk and Stuff #4

It’s been a while since I did a brain-dump of stuff going on behind the scenes related to this blog. So without further ado...

Low Carb Cinnamon Crumb Cake Ice Cream

I got a bunch of samples of ice cream flavorings from a distributor a while back and one flavor I never got around to using was one for cinnamon roll. You may not be able to get a hold of this specific product, but you can easily purchase cinnamon roll flavoring for hard candy that will work just as well.

I was originally going to do a “raw” cinnamon roll dough as a mix-in, but I found low carb cinnamon crumb muffins from WiO that will work just fine. Hooray for making life easy!

Low Carb Pizza Ice Cream

I read about this flavor online and was excited to make a low carb version. It’s described by Coolhaus as, “mascarpone base infused with sundried tomato, olive oil, basil and a pinch of salt.” I’ve got enough experience making ice cream to have a really good idea in my head how to do it...adding my own twist, of course.

Low Carb Fluffernutter Ice Cream

One kind of treat I never had as a child was a fluffernutter. I had no idea it even existed until I was an adult. It’s a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow fluff usually served on white bread. There exists ice cream flavorings specifically called fluffernutter, but they’re not generally available for home chefs. No worries. Individual peanut butter and marshmallow flavorings are easy to obtain. I’ll make little “sandwich bites” of peanut butter and marshmallow mix-ins as an extra bonus.

Low Carb Coconut “Macaroonies”

Ben Mims, Food Editor at Saveur magazine, created a "better than a macaroon bar" cookie recipe that I modified to be low carb. These babies are loaded with fat and very satisfying. He explains how he came up with this unique treat:

The idea to make a pure-coconut bar cookie originally came from attempting to develop a blondie recipe that used no butter or egg yolks and was, thus, completely white. I knew that using coconut oil and coconut flour would help keep the austere color, and egg whites would add the tender-but-chewy quality I love in regular blondies. The end result is this macaroon but in bar form—a ridiculous roundabout way to create a dish that, well, already existed.

But the coconut flavor was powerful, the texture chewy and dense in the good way, and the brownie pan added wonderful crisp edges. These cookies are a definite improvement on regular macaroons, so much so that when I get a macaroon craving, this is recipe I dig up.

Low Carb Orange Szechwan Pepper Ice Cream

I’ve had this recipe from “The Perfect Scoop” in my back pocket for months. David Lebovitz has this to say about this flavor:

After a big meal, when I feel like I can’t eat another bite, I like a dessert that’s been infused with an intriguing flavor, like Szechwan pepper, to coax my taste buds back to life. This ice cream starts off comfortably, with the familiar flavor of orange, and then comes alive with a kick from the Szechwan peppercorns.

Low Carb Cordially Yours Ice Cream

The “Milkmaids” at MilkMade Ice Cream came up with this flavor that was perfect for me to convert to low carb.

A cherry cordial in ice cream form: amaretto, cherry ice cream with chunks of maraschino cherries and chocolate chips.

Low Carb Mango Ice Cream with Lime Chili Pistachios

Mangoes and cream go together nicely, but mangoes and low carb, not so much. Fortunately, LorAnn Oils offers a mango ice cream flavoring that’s actually very authentic tasting. I looked up some popular flavor combinations for mangoes and found lime, chili, and pistachios all pair well. My experience making sugar-free spiced nuts allowed me to come up with a lime chili pistachio mix-in that works perfectly.

Low Carb Sweet Corn Buttermilk Ice Cream and more!

Sweet corn and low carb go together like oil and water. However, my recent procurement of sweet corn concentrate from Natures Flavors means that I can impart that wonderful essence without that starchy vegetable spiking my insulin. I decided to base my recipe on Salt & Straw’s Sweet Corn Buttermilk flavor. I liked the tanginess of the buttermilk so much that I decided to try two other buttermilk flavor combinations. Three low carb ice cream recipes for the price of one!