I Scream for Ice Cream!

I love ice cream.  I eat it all year long.  We live in western NY, and I believe our heater runs about 8 months out of the year and the AC perhaps a single week, but that doesn't stop my ice cream love affair.  I eat it when there's four feet of snow outside my door and I'm shivering from the cold. 

That's usually my downfall with eating low carb.  There's a lovely little ice cream shack in the next town over, that serves fairly locally made ice cream (that's very good), and Chad and I frequent it at least once a week in the summer.  Sometimes three times a week, because we love ice cream.  And I've been known to get two giant scoops of the melty goodness, which as you can imagine, probably has a billion grams of sugar in it.  Especially the kinds with pieces of cake or bits of brownie, or ripples of caramel (aka browned sugar).  I know if I want to stick to this diet for any length of time, I'm going to have to get serious about making my own ice cream. 

Thankfully, I discovered that Carolyn over at All Day I Dream About Food has a pretty impressive list of low carb ice cream recipes.  Last night, I tried her recipe for peanut butter fudge ripple ice cream, and it was pretty darn good.  I haven't tried it now that it's fully ripened, but even if it's still kind of hard and icy, it'll still be delicious. 

It does call for some things I don't normally have in the house, like Swerve sweetener and almond milk, but I have a trick up my sleeve.  My mom and I frequently go to a discount grocery store run by some Amish folks.  They go around and buy short dated items and stuff from stores that are closing, and resell it for amazing prices.  I got seven bags of Bob's red mill almond flour for $1 a piece!  That's a savings of about $60, no kidding.  I put it in my big freezer so it'll stay good longer.  The other day, I was lucky enough to run across two bags of Swerve sweetener for $2 a piece (it's usually $11 online), and some cartons of almond milk for 69 cents.  I love that store!  It's funny to listen to other people walking through the store, telling their friends to watch out for outdated food!  Folks, the expiration date is a suggestion, not a hard and fast rule.  It's almost always still good to eat for a long time after the date (with the exception of certain fresh food and things like nuts and grains, which can go bad/rancid, but you'll definitely know by how bad it smells).

I probably should take some pictures of my ice cream, but it's all the way downstairs and I'm happy right where I am. 

I'm thinking about buying some cake/wafer type cones to eat my ice cream on.  It's made of starch, but it's practically nothing but air.  I believe a whole cone is around 3 carbs.  And ice cream just isn't as fun when you eat it with a spoon. 

Low Carb Indulgence

I got two pounds of xylitol at the beginning of June, and I've been having fun playing with it to see how best to use it.  It's pretty neat, in that it can be measured cup for cup with regular sugar, and it has a lot of the same properties as sugar, too.  As with most sugar alcohols, you have to be careful with how much you eat or you could get an upset stomach, but the threshold is mush higher for xylitol.  Plus, xylitol is actually good for tooth health.

One of my favorite uses for it so far has been ice cream.  Yes, ice cream.  You can go buy CarbSmart low carb ice cream from Breyers if you're really craving it, but I always feel weird about the ten mile long ingredient list it sports, and your only choices for flavor are chocolate and vanilla.

I actually have been making ice cream for a while.  I have a nice KitchenAid mixer, and bought an ice cream maker attachment for it.  It works very well.  But when we went low carb, that seemed pretty much out of the question.  You may be asking, why didn't I just replace the sugar with stevia or something similar.  Well, that's simple.  The thing that makes ice cream soft and creamy is.... sugar.  Without sugar, your ice cream turns into ice, and no one likes rock hard ice cream.

However, as I said earlier, xylitol has many of the same properties as sugar, so I knew I wanted to try using it for ice cream at least once!

I ended up using this recipe from Food.com.  And it was delicious!!  If no one told you, you'd think it was normal sugary ice cream.

While I still had ice cream, I also decided to try a chocolate sauce recipe with xylitol.  Chocolate is a finicky creature.  It's very hard to do sugar free chocolate unless you use a sugar alcohol to sweeten it.  Stevia and Splenda both make chocolate taste incredibly bitter no matter how much sweetener you add.  I've had a recipe on hand for a while that I've been meaning to use.  I'd like to link to it, but I can't find the link anywhere, so here instead is the recipe!  If anyone can figure out where this recipe is from, let me know and I'll put it up here.

Sugar Free Chocolate Sauce
3 oz unsweetened chocolate (not cocoa powder)
2 tsp butter
1/2 c cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
6 tbsp xilitol
Pinch stevia
4-6 tsp water

Powder xylitol with stevia in food processor.  Melt chocolate and butter in double broiler, stirring until smooth.  Stir in cream and sweetener slowly, and whisk until smooth.  Remove from heat and add vanilla, and enough water for the right consistency.  Pour into container and store in the fridge.

OMG, I have to tell you that the chocolate sauce is soooo good.  It will be runny at first, but once you stick it in the fridge, it thickens up nicely.  I'm thinking about altering the recipe to make it into fudge.  Maybe remove the water and reduce the cream just a little.

And together?  Now that's heaven.