Cottage Cheese Ice Cream Recipe. High Protein. All Variations
Cottage Cheese Ice Cream
Cottage Cheese Ice Cream, what? Yes, you read that right. Amazingly creamy and as nourishing as a mini meal, super high protein dessert! And the best part? As easy to throw together as a smoothie!
The Cottage Cheese Renaissance
Like Greek Yogurt, it is not just high protein but a complete protein. Complete protein is the operative term here.
Amazing the renaissance the humble cottage cheese is currently enjoying. Much more than a passing fad, it seems to be here for keeps! Inexpensive, highly nutritious, incredibly versatile, easy to use, widely available. Do you remember Malcolm Gladwell’s groundbreaking book “The Tipping Point,”? In it, Gladwell uses the resurgence of Hush Puppies shoes in the mid-1990s as a key example of a “tipping point”. Likewise, cottage cheese has become the Hush Puppies of the Eating and Cooking Space. It is not just confined to seniors: That wretched stigma seems to have been left behind for good, and good riddance too! The hungry young Insta crowd has discovered cottage cheese, and is tinkering with it everywhere, it appears everywhere, from breads to pancakes to burgers to ice cream and everything in between. Needless to say, I am a life member of the club!
Basic Cottage Cheese Ice Cream
As always, I will start with the recipe I make most often, and suggest several variations. But once you do the base, you can play with your own flavors and variations, toppings and containers.
It is nice and rich, so small servings will be quite satisfying. I love to use mini mason jars: no problem stacking them in the freezer. But you can also use tall narrow 3-4 ounce cups. In this case, stand an ice cream stick in each.
Ingredients
Yields about 10 small servings
- 2 cups full fat cottage cheese
- 1 cup full fat Greek yogurt
- 1/4 cup strong coffee
- 1/4 cup peanut butter
- 1/4 cup maple syrup (very reasonable amounts: do not skip and do not replace)
- Good pinch sea salt (skip if your pecans were salted)
- 1/3 cup chopped roasted pecans, optional (I never skip them. Love the crunch)
Instructions
Put all but last ingredients in a high power blender, and run a full minute, until perfectly smooth.
Fold in the chopped nuts by hand
Pour into 10-12 mini mason jars or in tall ice cream molds. In the latter case, make sure you stand an ice cream stick in the center.
Transfer to a freezer. It will be ready in just a couple hours.
Variations
Making a few suggestions, and letting you create your own from these basic preps. Just as long as the cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, nut/seed butter and maple syrup are always present, go ahead and mix and match!
- Vanilla: omit the coffee, use almond, oat or coconut milk instead of coffee, use almond butter or sunflower butter, and a tablespoon vanilla extract
- Mocha ice cream. Add 1/4 cup cocoa powder, and
use a little more maple syrup - Berry ice cream. No coffee. Use almond butter, sunflower butter or tehina, and 2 cups frozen berries of your choice. Leave about 1/2 cup chopped unblended berries. This flavor will yield more batter, and it’s OK to pour it in a little larger containers
- Pistachio ice cream. No coffee. Any nut or seed butter you like, chopped roasted pistachio, and a scant 1/2 teaspoon spirulina to get the beautiful green color (super nutritious, easy to find online or in health food stores, and beautiful in your green smoothies and your matcha drinks)
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