Low Carb Sweet Cream Bases

The foundation for most ice cream recipes is what’s called a “Sweet Cream Base.” This is basically vanilla ice cream without the vanilla flavoring. There are lots of different variations of the sweet cream base. The simplest is cream, milk, and sugar. This is known as a Philadelphia style base and uses no eggs. French style uses egg yolks that are tempered and made into a custard. Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book has three variations including one using condensed milk. Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams adds corn syrup and cream cheese to their ice cream base in order to reduce large ice crystal formation and improve texture.

For low carb ice cream using tools found in the home, I’ve settled on two formulations: French Custard Base and Ben & Jerry’s “Whole Egg” Base. The first is much more complicated to make, but ought to result in a slightly richer ice cream. The second is super easy, but involves using raw eggs or purchasing pasteurized eggs. Most ice cream books do not use egg whites in their recipes. The claim is that the egg whites do not provide any benefit to the finished ice cream. However, I’ve found that using whole eggs whipped with a hand mixer on maximum speed results in a finished ice cream that had more overrun (i.e., air) than with just egg yolks. The ice cream is very scoopable even at low temperatures.

Future recipes that use a sweet cream base will link to this entry. It’s up to you which one to make since they ought to be interchangeable. Both recipes produce a “generous” quart of ice cream. If a recipe includes lots of solids (e.g., large nuts, cookies, cookie dough, etc.), cut back slightly on the cream/milk portions.

LorAnn Oils Flavor Fountain Flavors

I’m always on the lookout for new sources of flavorings and extracts to use in low carb recipe conversions. LorAnn Oils makes flavorings specifically for ice cream and milkshakes called “Flavor Fountain Flavors.” They’re available in small serving sizes, are unsweetened, and contain both flavoring and coloring.

I’m assuming these flavorings are water soluble, unlike the essential oils products they also make. Therefore, the banana flavor fountain product will probably work a lot better than other kinds of banana flavorings or extracts. I’ve tried the cake batter and pistachio so far and they both result in an incredible ice cream. I purchased a whole bunch of these, so it’s a safe bet that I’ll be using them in future ice creams quite a bit.

I buy these flavorings from Netrition. The have a huge selection of these on their website.

Low Carb Aztec “Hot” Chocolate Ice Cream

This is my second low carb conversion of a recipe from “The Perfect Scoop” by David Lebovitz and my first true Philadelphia-style ice cream since there are no eggs. I was drawn to this flavor due to the combination of chili powder, chocolate, and cinnamon. The ingredients and directions below are very close to what David provided in his book. He uses the darker Dutch-processed cocoa in all of his chocolate recipes, but if you don’t have it, go ahead and use regular cocoa. I had to make some minor adjustments to ensure the milkfat ratios and sweetness are similar using almond/coconut milk and unsweetened chocolate.

Fat tire bikes, you make the rocking world go round.

I decided to get back into biking recently, and after a little searching, I discovered these wonderfully ridiculous fat tire bikes sold at Walmart.

The World's Most Difficult-To-Make Toasted Coconut Low Carb Ice Cream

There’s a great ice cream book called “The Perfect Scoop” by David Lebovitz, which contains many unique and inventive recipes. The author seems very detailed oriented and committed to making the best ice cream that he can make. In other words, his recipes are usually very difficult to do. If I were going to make a coconut flavored ice cream, I’d take a sweet cream base, add vanilla and coconut extracts, and call it a day. Not David. His Toasted Coconut Ice Cream is made by “brewing” toasted unsweetened coconut in the cream and milk for an hour. He suggests using real vanilla beans, and of course, uses a cooked custard sweet cream base including five egg yolks. Reading his instructions left me with the impression that he must work as a professional chef. I say this because he doesn’t seem to care how may pots, saucepans, and bowls are necessary to accomplish his task. If you don’t have to wash the cookware afterwards, there’s not much incentive to minimize what ends up in the sink. I actually tried sketching out a storyboard of how this was going to work when finally, I threw my hands up and said, “I gotta rewrite this from scratch!” I don’t have any real vanilla beans, and I obviously won’t be using sugar, but I did try to remain faithful to the original recipe. I will be heating, straining, tempering, toasting, and steeping just like the pros, so this had better be worth it! Oh, and I’m adding some sliced almonds, too, because I can’t make “plain” ice cream no matter how complicated the process. I’m broken that way.

Scientific Consensus: Blessing or Curse?

In a previous post called, “The Myth of the Scientific Method,” I explored how science gets accomplished in real life by describing the knowledge filter. This doesn’t mean to imply that the filter is a perfect or even preferable method of distilling knowledge into truth. Biases may still survive even at the most refined levels.

Low Carb Rocky Road Ice Cream

Rocky Road was probably my first complex ice cream flavor that I tried and enjoyed. Baskin Robbins was the only “premium” source of ice cream available to me. Everything else was store bought half gallons. There were some fancy flavor combinations available from the supermarket freezer section, but nothing spectacular. The only options I can remember were Breyer’s butter pecan, which I disliked at the time, and some awful black cherry concoction. My grandparents used to love to buy a half gallon of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream, eat all the vanilla and chocolate, leave the strawberry third in the freezer for a few weeks, and then throw it out. Yes, I mentioned to them on multiple occasions that it would be better to just buy a half gallon of vanilla and another of chocolate, but they wouldn’t hear of it. I could fill a book of all the illogical stuff I witnessed as a child...but I digress.