Simple Sugar-Free Strawberry Ice Cream (Egg-Free)

This easy to make, refreshing sugar-free strawberry ice cream was developed in a chilling winter day — not what you would immediately expect for a cooling delicacy like this. However, I had some frozen strawberries from last summer and wanted to use them. I also had some coconut milk and got an idea to add thick Greek yogurt for giving a bit more refreshing touch and to thicken the consistency.

 

 

 

Simple Sugar-Free Strawberry Ice Cream (Egg-Free) 9 oz = 250 g almost totally melted frozen strawberries or fresh strawberries 7 oz = 200 g organic Greek or Turkish yogurt 7/8 cup = ~ 3/4 cup + 1 tablespoon = 200 ml organic coconut milk 1/3 cup = 80 ml 2 teaspoons organic vanilla extract   Directions Mix everything well together in a food processor depending how big pieces of strawberries you like. Pour the mixture to the ice cream maker and churn according to manufacturer’s instructions. Serve immediately and freeze the rest if something left.

 

 

 

Nutrition information	Protein	Fat	Net carbs	kcal
The whole batch:	14.9 g	56.5 g	36.6 g	713 kcal
Per portion if 4 portions in a batch:	3.7 g	14.1 g	9.2 g	178 kcal
Per portion if 6 portions in a batch:	2.5 g	9.4 g	6.1 g	119 kcal

 

This is the first ice cream I’ve ever made which doesn’t freeze to the bottom of my ice cream maker bowl. Usually always the ice cream mass forms a thin rock-hard layer to the bottom of the ice cream maker bowl while the machine is churning, but this ice cream mass seems to churn smoothly without getting stuck to the bowl.

This strawberry ice cream is not the lowest-carb, so please feel free to do substitutions according your diet. As occasional treat this is great and a small portion garnished with whipped cream and dark chocolate shavings satisfies perfectly the sweet tooth. Or, you can replace the strawberries with lower-carb berries, like raspberries or cranberries.

I got the idea for using coconut milk for ice cream from the marvelous blog of Elana Amsterdam and her fantastic recipe for Coconut Chocolate Chip Ice Cream. I made this ice cream with few substitutions with ingredients which suit my lifestyle, like replaced the coconut palm sugar with powdered erythritol and instead of 73% chocolate I used tiny shavings of 100% chocolate. I didn’t use salt either. The result was absolutely delicious. However, like usual, the ice cream mass froze to the bottom of my ice cream maker. I have to admit that the ice cream maker I have is a very cheap one and in general doesn’t perform well, so I dream about an ice cream maker where you don’t need to freeze the bowl for hours, but you just put the mass to the ice cream maker and it churns it to a nice, smooth ice cream.

Another great and ingeniously simple recipe for ice cream with coconut milk is {Dairy-Free} Chocolate Coconut Ice Cream from Alice Currah which Elana has also linked. So creative and delicious! Only three ingredients needed and you’ve got delicious ice cream without food additives or preservatives. However, instead of sugar I would use erythritol or stevia to make it low-carb.

In many recipes you have to cook some cream and milk with egg yolks and then cool the mixture before you make the ice cream. With coconut milk you don’t have to cook and chill anything, you just mix the ingredients together and pour the mixture to the ice cream maker. You just have to make sure that the mixture is not too fluid, and for that Greek yogurt is a nice thickener which also makes the taste more fresh especially if you use berries or fruits. I’ve tried out guar gum as thickener since it is sometimes used in commercial ice cream as well and guar gum is a natural and safe low-carb thickener. My versions of ice cream with guar gum however turned out slimy, so I gave up guar gum in ice cream. I still use it in sauces and it’s great thickener for example in fondue instead of corn or potato starch.

Do you use any thickener in ice cream? How about sauces? Do you prefer starch or something lower-carb?