Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Low Carb Mocha Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

I was in the supermarket looking for inspiration for new flavors when small jar of freeze-dried coffee caught my eye. Ugh. I don’t like coffee flavored ice cream, but maybe I can convince my wife to be a guinea pig? She agreed! Freeze-dried coffee is how Ben & Jerry did it in their book back in the 80s. Sure, if you want to get fancy, you’d add high quality espresso beans in the ice cream mix while heating and let it steep for an hour, then strain. Another method would be to make a “coffee concentrate:”
To prepare coffee concentrate, you will need a coffee toddy, 1 pound medium to fine ground coffee, and ½ gallon cold water. Set the toddy over an empty jar, place the coffee in the filter, and pour the water over it. Let the coffee drip overnight. This makes 5 ounces of concentrate. Use only 4½ teaspoons for each batch of ice cream.
MilkMade uses uses Grady’s Cold Brew in their ice cream. Coffee aficionados should feel free to experiment, but I took the cheapest and easiest way out.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

“Dumb” food scales are all you need

One of the latest fad kitchen gifts for 2015 is “smart” food scales. These scales usually work in tandem with an app on Android or iOS that contain recipes written using weights instead of volume measurements. The app guides you through the recipe by communicating with the scale to determine how much of the ingredient has been added.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Low Carb Don Draper Ice Cream

This flavor was inspired during a marathon viewing of the TV series Mad Men. The lead character, Don Draper, often orders a drink called an Old Fashioned: whiskey (rye or bourbon), Angostura bitters, club soda, sugar, and a twist of orange rind. I hadn’t done a boozy ice cream in a while and this seemed simple and fun to try.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Low Carb Thanksgiving Dinner Ice Cream

I’ve made low carb conversions of wild and weird ice cream flavors that other people created, but this one is all mine. Yes, Salt & Straw did make a salted caramel ice cream with candied turkey skins and turkey fat, but this recipe goes even further. I’m packing a whole Thanksgiving dinner in there: turkey, gravy, sweet corn, cranberry, and bread stuffing!

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Low Carb Gravel Road Ice Cream

This recipe is from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home book:
In the mood for Salty Caramel with nuts? Add smoked almonds and make Gravel Road. Reduce the salt in the ice cream to ¼ teaspoon, then make and freeze the ice cream. Pack it into the storage container, layering it with 1 cup coarsely chopped smoked almonds.
I bought a small can of Blue Diamond Smokehouse Almonds, chopped up a cup’s worth and boom, I’m done. Seriously, this ice cream flavor was easy to do. The smoked almonds pair perfectly with the salted caramel.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Low Carb Earl Grey Sriracha Ice Cream

Whenever an article on strange ice cream flavors is written, Earl Grey Sriracha is usually included. A recipe for this flavor was included in the book “Scoop Adventures” by Lindsay Clendaniel. Here’s what she wrote about this strange combination:
Earl Grey tea, with its citrus and floral notes, is a tea originating in Southeast Asia. There are many variations of the story behind the tea, but most stories acknowledge that the tea was made as a gift to the second Earl Grey from a Chinese mandarin. The owners of Little Baby’s Ice Cream describe the flavor of this scoop as the milk from Fruit Loops cereal with a garlicky spicy kick at the end. The initial citrus bite and subsequent sweet rush gently give way to the Sriracha’s subtle heat as the ice cream melts on your tongue. Serve as a spicy and surprising addition to any afternoon tea.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Low Carb Spiced Banana Ice Cream

This ice cream recipe was posted on Epicurious a while back and I thought would be fun to try. It was created by the chefs at Bluestem restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri. The combination doesn’t seem too exciting at first glance. Other than the inclusion of white pepper, they’re all ingredients that I’ve used before. However, the result is an ice cream that’s very unique and enjoyable.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Low Carb Garam Masala and Cinnamon Cauliflower Ice Cream

This wild new flavor combination was created by the Salt & Straw. Here’s how they describe it on their website:
Whoa. Who’s that smolderingly sexy vegetable sitting all alone at the bar? Unlikely as it seems, this flavor has fast become one of our all-time favorites, and a righting of the ship of the sometimes dowdy reputation of cauliflower. In this incarnation, it is devastatingly provocative, funky, and spicy, and it makes you feel personally emboldened. We roast the cauliflower to a dark golden amber color, bringing out the sweetness, then we add a custom blend of cinnamony garam masala, and then we just let the sparks fly.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Low Carb Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream

I’m perplexed why hazelnuts aren’t more popular in the USA. Mention Frangelico liqueur or Nutella and people swoon, but you may be hard-pressed to find hazelnuts in your local supermarket. It’s also surprising that hazelnuts don’t come up often in ice cream recipes. When it does, it’s usually paired with chocolate. I made this with a sweet cream base and with a chocolate base. Both were good, but I prefer the chocolate base.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Wild ice cream recipes that I probably won’t ever attempt

I found a book called Ice Cream Galore by Caroline Barty that has some pretty off-the-wall recipes. These are all savory flavors meant to be served with fish or meat. I doubt that I will ever make these, so I’ll provide the original ingredient lists with the author’s commentary and leave them up to you to give them a try. Most contain no sugar and ought to be low carb, as-is.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Low Carb Horchata Ice Cream with Cinnamon Coated Almonds

Horchata is a drink usually made from made of ground almonds, sesame seeds, rice, barley, or tigernuts. LorAnn Oils makes a flavoring that I felt would be perfect for an ice cream. It's great just with with cinnamon and sweetener sprinkled on after it’s been scooped, but I decided to add cinnamon coated almonds.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Sugar-Free Spiced Nuts

Spiced nuts are a common theme in many ice cream books. Humphry Slocombe uses “Frosted Peanuts,” which are peanuts coated with sugar, but no spice. Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams has recipes for “Honey Nut / Blackstrap Pralines.” Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream uses “Candied Hazelnuts” in their ice creams. David Lebovitz in his book, “The Perfect Scoop,” includes a recipe for “Pralined Almonds.” The combinations are limitless!1

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Low Carb Black Walnut Divinity Ice Cream

This is a popular flavor by Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams and is in their recipe book. The original recipe involves grinding ½ cup of toasted walnuts into a paste using a food processor and and then mixing that into the heated base “so the oils in the walnuts adhere to the oils in the butterfat—this locks the walnuts’ distinct flavor into the cream.” By all means, go ahead and make it that way if you like. I took the easy way out and used black walnut flavoring, which means any of my low carb sweet cream bases can be used including the no-cook method.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Curlify - Make all your quote characters curly

Blogger’s web-based composer is a simple to use interface for creating blog entries. It’s got a basic word processor interface and includes formatting options like bold, italic, number lists, bulleted lists, etc. Unlike most modern word processors, the composer only inserts straight quotes rather than the fancier curly quotes. What’s the difference, you may ask?

Straight quotes are the two generic vertical quotation marks located near the return key: the straight single quote ( ' ) and the straight double quote ( " ).

Curly quotes are the quotation marks used in good typography. There are four curly quote characters: the opening single quote ( ‘ ), the closing single quote ( ’ ), the opening double quote (  “  ), and the closing double quote (  ”  ).

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Low Carb Chocolate Philadelphia-style Ice Cream Base

Chocolate ice cream is probably the most varied of all the popular flavors. Googling for recipes yields wildly different ratios of cocoa, chocolate, and milkfat. Back when I first read the Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book, I was surprised to see there were two different formulas provided. Ben used lots of melted chocolate and zero cocoa while Jerry used a combination of cocoa and chocolate. (I’ve always preferred using a combination of the two.) The technique I use for melding the cocoa, cream and chocolate together is from “The Perfect Scoop” by David Lebovitz. It’s basically the same method for making a ganache: Heat the cream, sugar, and cocoa until it begins to boil, remove from heat, and stir in chopped chocolate.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Low Carb Zabaglione Gelato

This is another low carb conversion from The Perfect Scoop book by David Lebovitz. This ice cream is based on an Italian custard that uses Marsala wine and sugar for flavoring.
True zabaglione—a foamy custard of egg yolks, wine, and sugar—is often made to order in Italian restaurants. Moments after the waiter takes your order, you’ll hear the frenetic “clang-clack-clang” of the whisk hitting the copper bowl in the kitchen. Once it’s reached a billowy peak, it’s heaped into a glass quickly but not necessarily neatly (speed trumps presentation with zabaglione) and served straight up and warm. In season, you’ll often find sliced strawberries buried underneath all that delicious froth. Zabaglione Gelato captures the taste of a true zabaglione in a cool scoop of ice cream without the last-minute flurry of activity, and it’s just as good served with lots of juicy strawberries.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Low Carb Cookie Monster Ice Cream

This is another low carb conversion of a recipe I found in the book “Scoop Adventures” by Lindsay Clendaniel. She was inspired to make a homemade version of this flavor from Serendipity Homemade Ice Cream in St. Louis, Missouri.
Walk into any ice cream shop with children and they are often drawn to the most colorful flavors, with blue flavors at the top of the list. When owner Beckie Jacobs decided to make a blue flavor, she started with a cotton candy ice cream. One day she decided to mix in cookies so the flavor was reminiscent of the favorite Sesame Street character Cookie Monster, and now it is her most popular flavor. Bright blue and full of flavor, this ice cream is sure to please any color-loving child (or adult).

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Low Carb Honey Jalapeño Pickle Ice Cream

There’s an ice cream shop in Denver, Colorado called Sweet Action Ice Cream that used to make this flavor. This is one strange combo, even for me, but how can I resist the challenge?! I was surprised how much I like this savory, sweet, and spicy flavor.

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

How to Get WiFi Voice and Text Phone Service for Free

My wife suggested getting a cell phone for my son, but I fear that he’s too young to be responsible for an expensive device. I’m also pretty sure he’s not going to be using it to make phone calls often. Still, it would be nice if there was an inexpensive way to contact him when he’s at a friend’s house or at the library.

Our local cable company is offering a WiFi-only cell phone service for $9.95 a month for its subscribers. There is no cell-based voice or data connection. They’re relying on their WiFi hotspots for connectivity away from the home. A proprietary app is what’s used to make (voice-over-IP) phone calls and SMS text messages. I don’t think this is a good deal considering it’s a WiFi-only solution. The phone they provide costs about $100 on top of the monthly fee. However, this got me thinking about other services that could offer the same thing for less. Inexpensive Android OS devices combined with free voice-over-IP and free phone bridging services are out there if you know where to look.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Low Carb Gouda “Butterfinger” Ice Cream

I found an article online titled, “Cheese And Dessert Pairings That Will Blow Your Mind” that piqued my interest. Some of the pairings were familiar, some were new, but one stood out: aged Gouda and dark chocolate. The claim was that it “tastes like a grown-up version of a Butterfinger.” How can I resist?

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Low Carb “Lite” Butter Pecan

Butter pecan ice cream was my first attempt at low carb ice cream many years ago. The first batch froze like a rock because I didn’t consider the effects a lack of real sugar would have on the recipe. This flavor was very simple to make and extremely satisfying since it’s pecan halves cooked in salted butter with the salty browned butter mixed into a sweet cream base. The only downside is that it’s extremely calorie dense. Now that I have a relatively low calorie, low carb ice cream base to play with, I thought I’d try making a “lite” version of butter pecan.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Low Carb Whole Milk Replacement for Ice Cream - Part 2

Let’s recap the results of part one. Replacing whole milk with almond milk for use in ice cream can be achieved by adding whey and casein proteins. In order to ensure these proteins and the fat from the heavy cream result in a homogeneous ice cream mix, we will require the following:

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Low Carb Whole Milk Replacement for Ice Cream - Part 1

Chefs that make regular sugar-based ice creams use ingredients like corn syrup, nonfat milk powder, and cream cheese because they contain simple sugars like glucose and/or milk proteins that improve aspects of the finished product. I’m going to concentrate on the milk proteins for obvious reasons.

Home ice cream recipes generally use a 2:1 ratio of heavy cream to whole milk yielding a product that’s a little over 20% milk fat. (The legal minimum milk fat required for ice cream in the USA is 10%.) Heavy cream is great for low carb dieting since it has very little sugar and is high in fat. Whole milk is relatively low in fat and higher in sugars like lactose that are not only a poor source of nutrition, they’re undesirable for making hard ice cream. The parts of whole milk that are useful are the proteins. Whey protein provides a lot of benefits such as water binding, viscosity (thickness), and emulsification. Casein adds body (chew), texture (smoothness), and resistance to heat shock. Substituting whole milk for almond milk means we’re missing out on these important milk proteins. The solution is simple: add them back in...and then some!

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Low Carb Goat Cheese Ice Cream with Honey Walnuts

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “This all sounds very familiar.” Yes, I already did a Low Carb Roquefort and Honey Ice Cream. So why am I doing this one? What’s the big whoop? I found this in “The Perfect Scoop” by David Lebovitz and I assumed it would just be a simple swap of blue cheese for goat cheese. No, not exactly. There’s double the cheese and zero heavy cream in this formulation probably due to the stronger flavor and harder consistency of blue cheese relative to goat cheese. There’s more milk used in this one, thus one more egg yolk.

The two recipes are very different in the book, but my low carb conversions ended up similar, especially the mix-ins. However, the two ice creams are nothing alike as far as flavor is concerned. If you tasted this one without knowing it contained goat cheese, you’d swear it was an attempt at a cheesecake ice cream. If you wanted to try making ice cream with low sugar fruits, this would be a good base to use.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Low Carb Cracker Jack Ice Cream

Box of Cracker Jack. Cracker Jack had been absent from my thoughts for years until it popped up in a moment of nostalgic reflection. I remember how my father used to frequently remind us kids that the prizes were a lot better when he was young. They were so bad in the 1970s that it became entertaining, in a weird sort of way, to dig out the tiny trinket and marvel at how sucky the “toy” was. From what I hear, the prizes haven’t gotten any better. I never had a great love for Cracker Jack as a child. It was way too sticky. The caramel coating stuck to your fingers and teeth. Oh, and if it got stale... God help you if you got a box of stale Cracker Jack. Nevertheless, it’s an iconic brand with a unique flavor. Yes, there are similar products like Fiddle Faddle and I even preferred it to Cracker Jack, but let’s face it... Nobody’s going to know how the hell “Low Carb Fiddle Faddle Ice Cream” tastes from the title alone.

I found a copycat recipe for Cracker Jack and discovered the secret ingredients: popcorn, caramel, brown sugar, molasses, and redskin peanuts. I’ve done a popcorn inspired ice cream with great success, so that’s what I’ll use for my base. Caramel is an easy addition using LorAnn Oils Flavor Fountain Flavorings and I’ll add some molasses and brown sugar flavorings, too. Spanish redskin peanuts were a little difficult to find, but I eventually tracked them down at Walmart.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Low Carb Chocolate Chipotle Barbecue Ice Cream

I made a spicy chocolate ice cream a while back called Low Carb Aztec “Hot” Chocolate Ice Cream and it was great. I never got around to repeating it with ground chipotle chili powder. The people at CoolHaus had a similar idea using pureed chipotle chilies and a swirl of whiskey barbecue sauce, too:
This flavor was inspired by the famous Franklin Barbecue restaurant in Austin, Texas. Imagine you had just eaten a spice-rubbed, long-smoked brisket doused with a tangy barbecue sauce. Then you plopped some chocolate cake onto the plate. The resulting sweet, smoky, zingy, peppery, perky, tangy blend is truly complex, as only great Texas barbecue can be.
This is my first attempt at a low carb conversion from the CoolHaus book of ice cream recipes. I like their flavor combinations, but not many can be adapted. I also found many of the recipe instructions were confusing and written poorly. I’m using Guy’s Award Winning Sugar Free BBQ Sauce plus a little bit of bourbon. I figure the alcohol will keep the sugar-free sauce from freezing, plus...well, booze. Is any other reason necessary?

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Low Carb Cannoli Ice Cream

The lack of cannoli ice creams is inconceivable to me. Everyone loves cannolis, so why can’t I find it as a flavor on the shelves or in the parlors? Ben & Jerry’s had a flavor called “Holy Cannoli” that got sent to their flavor graveyard in 1998. They made a limited batch of a new kind of cannoli without the pistachios back in 2012.

Ben & Jerry's Cannoli Ice Cream Container.

There was another significant difference between the original and the reboot: mascarpone cheese instead of ricotta. These two cheeses are very similar, but I think mascarpone will work better in an ice cream. Ricotta is very watery and lower in fat, so it needs to be put in a strainer for days to dry out for making cannolis (or ice cream!)

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Low Carb Apple Pie with Cheddar Cheese Ice Cream

I was eager to do another cheese ice cream after the success of the Low Carb Roquefort and Honey Ice Cream. I decided to try doing one combining apple pie filling and cheddar cheese. The ice cream will be flavored with sweet caramel, apple, and cinnamon flavorings. I don’t trust any of the ready-made no-sugar-added apple pie fillings in a can, so I’m going to do one myself for the mix-in.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Low Carb Balsamic Caramel Ice Cream with Roasted Strawberries

The Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream Book explains that they like to use vinegar in their ice creams “because it adds an unexpected savory twist, while helping offset the sweet richness that’s usually found in ice creams.” Salted caramel had been done by other trendy ice cream shops, so they decided to pair their caramel with balsamic vinegar. I’ve usually seen balsamic vinegar paired with strawberry ice cream, so I thought, “Why not add some roasted strawberries, too?”

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Low Carb Peanut Butter Cup/Egg Ice Cream

Peanut butter cups in ice cream are great. Most brands use vanilla as a base, but I’m using peanut butter flavored ice cream! Brilliant, eh?

Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream Container.

Oh, uh...I guess great minds think alike.

Friday, April 3, 2015

Low Carb Peanut Butter Eggs

This copycat recipe from Chocolate Covered Katie's blog caught my eye a while back. The part that intrigued me was her use of cocoa powder and coconut oil to make the sugar-free chocolate coating. (I happened to see that same method used on a recipe from a container of coconut oil for chocolate covered strawberries, too.) It's a lot easier than the method used to make Chocolate Almond Butter Bombs but the taste is very different. However, it works just dandy as a coating for these peanut butter eggs.

Reese's peanut butter eggs.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Low Carb S’mores Ice Cream

S’mores are wonderful treats that combine the flavors of chocolate, marshmallow and graham crackers. I was able to get a hold of a marshmallow ice cream flavoring, but you can probably do just as well using marshmallow flavorings from LorAnn Oils or Capella.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Low Carb Roquefort and Honey Ice Cream

When I found this recipe in “The Perfect Scoop” by David Lebovitz, I knew one day I would try to make it low carb. The recipe should work for any kind of blue cheese, but knowing how much thought David puts into his ingredient choices, I made sure to get actual Roquefort. (It’s made from sheep’s milk rather than cow’s milk.) Thankfully I didn’t have to track it down at some hipster-run artisan cheese shop. Trader Joe’s sells Société brand and it’s exquisite! I had to dig through their cheese section to find it.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Low Carb Mexican Spicy Cinnamon Ice Cream

David Lebovitz’s Cinnamon Ice Cream recipe uses real sticks of cinnamon and I assume tastes wonderful. However, I procured a ready-made ice cream flavoring from a distributor called “Mexican Spicy Cinnamon.”

For mix-ins, I decided to toss in half a recipe of Low Carb Cinnamon Sugar Crisps Con Chocolate. These ought to stay crispy in the ice cream and give it a boost of chocolate and cinnamon flavor. Adding additional ground cinnamon right before churning can also help boost the cinnamon experience, but the crisps do a great job of it all by themselves.

I suggest making the crisps smaller. Try not to use giant pork rind pieces. Ensure they’re completely coated in chocolate, too.

This might be a good recipe to add some chile powder, too! Experiment!

Monday, March 16, 2015

Low Carb Cinnamon Sugar Crisps Con Chocolate

Churros are fried-dough pastries smothered in cinnamon and sugar. They’re often served covered in chocolate. I could probably recreate them using Carbalose flour and a deep fryer, but that’s way too much work. I could approximate the flavor without the effort if I baked low carb tortillas basted with butter and dipped in cinnamon and sweetener. However, those are still too carby and requires toasting in the oven.

There’s another low carb staple I can use and doesn’t require toasting at all. PORK RINDS!

Monday, March 9, 2015

Automatically adding captions to images on Blogger

One of the advantages of using the Blogger web interface is that knowledge of HTML isn’t required. Images that get added through the rich text interface are automatically inserted into a “div” container and hyperlinked so that clicking on them starts a slideshow of the page’s images. Captioned images are wrapped in a table. The user doesn’t need to know any of this since it’s done for them behind the scenes.

Good practice dictates that images have “alt” attributes assigned to them. The “alt” attribute is used in HTML and XHTML documents to specify alternative text (a.k.a. alt text) that is to be rendered when the element to which it is applied cannot be rendered. It is also used by “screen reader” software so that a person who is listening to the content of a webpage (for instance, a person who is blind) can interact with this element. Another attribute commonly used is “title.” Assigning this attribute allows for a pop-over to appear when the mouse pointer is hovering over an image. This can be useful way to provide supplemental information or context about the image that the author feels isn’t important enough to include as a caption.

The advent of touch interfaces makes hovering impossible. Mobile devices almost always implement a touch interface, so mobile users cannot access the title attribute of an object. To assist mobile users without putting an additional burden on a blogger, I’ve come up with a way to automatically append the title attribute text as a caption to images for mobile browsers. No intimate knowledge of HTML or JavaScript is necessary; however, this process will require changes to the Blogger template and style sheet.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Low Carb Drunken Parrot Ice Cream

I got a sample of Hawaiian Pineapple ice cream flavoring, but I struggled initially to think of interesting flavor combinations. Fear not, I’ve got some wild ideas for this flavor. This one isn’t too wacky. I found some “pineapple rum long-drink recipes” that inspired this ice cream mix.

Drunken parrot

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Low Carb German Chocolate Cake Ice Cream

One of the ice cream flavorings I bought from a distributor was German Chocolate Cake. It’s normally only available in the larger quart size. From what I can tell, it’s a combination of the Chocolate Fudge flavoring with coconut extract added. You can recreate it by using a tablespoon of the LorAnn Oils Flavor Fountain Flavorings, Chocolate Fudge and coconut extract.

German chocolate cake frosting is a vanilla butter cream frosting with coconut flakes mixed in. I also added pecans since the cake includes them, too. The ice cream got solid quicker than usual since the flavoring thickened it considerably.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Low Carb “Skinny” Elvis Ice Cream

Sorry to all Elvis fans for not getting this done by January for Elvis’ birthday. Legend has it that Elvis adored peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwiches. If I were to do this as a regular sugar-based ice cream, I’d use caramelized bananas, but since this is low carb, I’ll just use banana ice cream flavoring. I’ll make a peanut butter swirl and add candied bacon, too. (Using peanut butter flavored ice cream and adding bananas isn’t going to work for obvious reasons.)

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Low Carb Peanut Butter Curry Ice Cream

This is another low carb conversion of from the Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream Book. Adding curry to ice cream gives my wife the willies, but I welcome it with open arms. The origin story of this flavor is documented in the book:
The marriage of peanut butter and curry isn’t that much of a stretch. If you’ve ever had Thai food, you’ve had them together. But you may not have met them coupled in a dessert. This flavor was born as a cookie at Coi and perfected as ice cream at the shop.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Low Carb Avocado Ice Cream

This has got to be the easiest ice cream recipe in “The Perfect Scoop” by David Lebovitz. No cooking at all. Just toss the ingredients in a blender and churn. Avocados definitely sound like a strange ingredient for an ice cream, but this flavor works really well thanks to the sour cream and lime.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Low Carb Almond Joy Ice Cream

I hated Almond Joy bars as kid. I preferred Mounds, instead. It wasn’t an aversion to almonds. I just didn’t like that giant nut in the middle of my chocolate and coconut. Nevertheless, I do like the combination of chocolate, coconut and almond, so this should translate well to an ice cream.

I like chunks of stuff in my ice cream, so almonds are a no-brainer. Wait, scratch that. Chocolate covered almonds. Yes, much better. I don’t have a coconut ice cream flavoring, but coconut and almond extracts are readily available. I think coconut flakes would be a good mix-in, but we need to sweeten them. Granular Splenda and Truvia should work well and I’ll use melted coconut oil to get it to stick.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Low Carb Chocolate Ice Cream with Peanut Butter

Ice cream from Baskin-Robbins is one of my fondest childhood memories. Back then, their stores actually stocked 31 different flavors to choose from and the quality of the ice cream was a huge step above the stuff at the supermarket. Most Baskin-Robbins stores today share space with other non-ice cream offerings to support off-season revenue streams (like Dunkin Donuts) and the available flavor selections are scaled back dramatically since the old days. One of my favorites was “Peanut Butter ‘n Chocolate Ice Cream,” which is exactly what it sounds like: chocolate ice cream with a ribbon of peanut butter running through it.

Pint of ice cream.