What has the power to make me expend energy writing a blog post? You guessed it: ice cream!

I’m having a very hard time quitting my sweet habit. I don’t eat a lot of desserts and I can live without processed sugar, but I seem to need that little bite of sweetness after meals to seal the deal. Small bites of ice cream and chocolate have always been my go-to desserts.

All store-bought, non-dairy ice creams have carageenan, guar gum, erythritol, and “natural flavors” or soy lecithin or a lot of sugar. Although I don’t eat these a lot, I’ve felt frustrated at my inability to eliminate this habit when I have so easily and strictly stopped eating all the other food groups my doctor has specified. Bring in this $34 (when I bought it) ice cream maker on Amazon Prime. It was too daunting for me to tackle, but my husband made it look easy and I’ve had fresh, creamy, healthier ice cream for the last few weeks.

Here’s the basic info: coconut milk + sweetener + flavour = YUM

The coconut milk should be the full-fat canned kind. This is the only brand I found with no guar gum in it. The sweetener can be dates (make amazing “caramel”) or bananas or honey or coconut sugar (resembles brown sugar and my doctor has okayed it!). The flavour can be anything you can dream up ~ nuts, fruit, extracts etc.

So far I have made Caramel Pecan, using this recipe from My Whole Food Life (it was far too sweet for me with 2 tbs of honey in addition to the dates, so be careful) and Pistachio-Almond, using Food Babe’s recipe, but, beware: I used 1/2 cup of pistachios and there were too many nuts and not enough creaminess. Also, don’t use salted pistachios ~ duh! I have the ingredients for the mint chocolate chip (even though the Enjoy Life chips are made from cane juice and I’m not allowed to have it on my current diet) and I have some huckleberries with which I want to experiment. The Spunky Coconut has a lot of recipes, too. She uses hemp and chia seeds which help take the place of the “gums”. There are some other creative flavour ideas here.

Before you get started, make sure you have all the ingredients needed, plus ice and salt for the ice cream making process (there is a product called “ice cream salt“, but I think you can use regular salt, too). Don’t believe the recipe if it says you need to freeze the ice cream maker bowl first or refrigerate the tin of coconut milk overnight- you don’t.

Ok, my half hour is up and I have to go to an ENT doctor appointment for my sinus issues, which are stopping me from wearing my cpap, and what might be an ear infection from trying to be “healthy” and use nasal irrigation. Another purchase wasted. Down with neti pots!

I was going to go back and spend more time making this a fancy two-scoop photo, but I couldn’t be arsed. You get the gist. 😉