Wednesday 17 April 2013

Easy Low Carb Ice Creams - Vanilla Berry flavour.

I know, I know. Posting an ice cream recipe in Autumn. Real clever. Maybe my friends in the Northern Hemisphere will get some use out of this one?


These are portion-controlled, ridiculously quick, cheap, and easy to make, and a wonderful "grab-and-eat" food to have on hand. I have a ton of uni assignments at the moment, so time is really at a premium.

I impulse-purchased some paddle pop moulds quite cheaply from that overwhelming trolley of random reduced-to-clear crap every supermarket has. I'm sure places like Hot Dollar or The Reject Shop would stock these all year round. If you want to be a little more upmarket, try kitchen shops.

This is another highly customisable recipe, and you can go nuts experimenting with whatever flavours you like. I had great success with mint choc chip on my first attempt.

This time, I tried vanilla berry.


You will need:


  • 1 cup of frozen berries
  • 1 cup of cream (you could also use plain unsweetened yoghurt, or a nut or soy milk substitute)
  • 2 tablespoons of Natvia
  • A teaspoon of vanilla essence
 

Make some mess:


Give the berries a quick zap in the microwave so they're not too hard on your blender. Chuck them into the jug with the cream, vanilla, and Natvia. Process until you're happy with the consistency. It shouldn't take long at all.

You won't need much unless you're making several batches. The moulds hold less than you think.


I poured the mixture back into a bowl so I wouldn't have to deal with the blender blades while trying to spoon it into the moulds.



Spoon it in, give the moulds a few good taps on the bench top to dislodge any air bubbles, and put the handles in.


I'll be seeing you later!

Leave them in the freezer for at least four hours. Overnight is best.

To get them out in one piece, soak them for a moment in a container of hot water. If you don't want to remove all four at once, just hang the other two outside the container. Be gentle. You don't want to rip the handle out.





The texture isn't exactly like store-bought ice cream, but I think that inconvenience is worth knowing exactly what goes into your food. You could experiment with adding gelatin or egg yolks, but I certainly couldn't be bothered. Not unless I was getting the ice cream machine out to make a proper, big batch.


Carb Count:

There's about 8g of carbohydrate in a cup of cream, and 10g in a cup of berries. I don't think there's enough carbs to bother counting in the small amount of Natvia I used.
Split four ways, that's 4.5 carbs per ice cream. Not too bad, when a normal Rainbow Paddle Pop has 17g.

Also useful for appeasing dangerous wild men who may wander into your kitchen.

There's so many things you can try with this. Pick whatever base (yoghurt, cream, soy milk) you like the best, and hit up the baking needs aisle to scope out the different flavourings available. Add crushed peanuts, shredded coconut, cardamom, cinnamon, whatever you like!

You could add a scoop of protein powder to the mix if you like that type of thing.

Maybe even make a ganache out of very dark chocolate and coat the outside of your ice cream if you're missing Magnums?

Get creative! I'd love to see what you come up with.

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