Before giving this recipe, I should warn you that it contains a high carb count. 

A blog reader recently criticized the fat count.  Fat doesn’t make you fat.  In fact, the most weight I have ever lost was on a high fat diet.  I don’t recommend that for several health reasons, but the fact is that the heavy cream is NOT a concern in this ice cream for weight loss reasons.

However, the honey is a concern.  I eat this ice cream only in certain combinations with other foods.  A couple of examples of where it would be appropriate would be:

1. During the reward meal while following the carbohydrate addict’s diet by Dr. Heller.  That would mean less carbohydrates during that reward meal so that the number of total carbs including this ice cream amount to about 1/3rd of the meal.  The reward meal can only be one meal a day after following the strict almost no carb controlled meals on the Heller plan.  Those two meals would consist of 1 cup of almost no carb veggies (brocolli, cauliflower, green beans, spinach, etc) and a small piece of almost no carb meat (4-6oz of beef, pork, chicken, tuna, etc… no bacon, ham or anything else processed or cured with sugar or other carbs).

2. On a reward day while following any other low carb plan that includes a reward day and under the rules of that plan.

With that said, you can easily make a low carb ice cream, but it would NOT include honey as this recipe does.

Here is the recipe:

1 pint of heavy whipping cream

1 cup of honey (many prefer 1/2 cup of honey)

7 oz of coconut cream (also might be a significant source of carbs… I haven’t checked… it would pale in comparison to the honey though)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Mix all ingredients in your favorite ice cream maker and let the ice cream maker do it’s thing.

The honey will not freeze which will keep the ice cream from getting hard in the freezer.  It’s probably possible to mix the above ingredients and skip the ice cream maker.  You can probably just freeze it in the freezer and it won’t get hard.

Now here is a low-carb version of the above that will get hard, but can be eaten guilt-free on any low-carb plan:

1 pint of heavy whipping cream

Add drops of stevia to sweetness preference (mix and taste between drops)

Add vanilla extract to taste

Add to your ice cream maker and mix until it starts to overflow.  The cream will become whipped cream or butter before it freezes.  Spoon into freezer containers and freeze.

You will have to remove this from the freezer 20 minutes or so before you intend on eating it because it will be very hard if you don’t let it melt a bit.  Don’t worry about it melting to much.  It won’t.  It is already butter and won’t melt at room temperature even.  It just won’t be as cold as you would like it.

You can add a modest amount of strawberries or raspberries to this low-carb version.  Both fruits are relatively low in carbs.

You can also add raw eggs to improve the texture somewhat.  I did that when I had my own chickens which were known to be disease-free.  Many U.S. commercial chickens have salmonella infections though and a microscopic crack in an egg can admit salmonella bacteria.  It is also possible (although unlikely) for an egg to be an infinite age in the U.S. due to laws that allow eggs to be repackaged and redated an unlimited number of times.

In Europe, the salmonella problem is extremely limited.  Each individual egg is date stamped, so I wouldn’t hesitate to use raw eggs in a recipe in Europe… nor if you have your own laying chickens and know they are healthy.

-James D. Brausch