Better Home Cooking Basics: #69 Top Your Ice Cream with Spices to Add More Flavor (Not More Fat!).

It's ice cream weather! While hot fudge, whipped cream & extra sprinkles all offer extra deliciousness to everyone's favorite summer treat they also add extra calories. Today, I'm asking you to put down the typically delicious & caloric toppings & visit your spice rack instead. Spices aren't just for cooking any more. You can jazz up any kind of ice cream with spices which means more flavor without added fat! Keep reading for my ice cream & spice pairing suggestions.

Better Home Cooking Basics: #60 For the Perfect Scoop of Ice Cream Use Hot Water & an Ice Cream Scoop.

In honor of free cone day at Ben & Jerry's today, I thought I'd give you the scoop on how to scoop your ice cream (or gelato or sorbet or whatever version of frozen delciousness you prefer).

Soft Serve Vegan Pumpkin Ice Cream

I had some extra pumpkin in my fridge (after making these pancakes) & was craving something sweet so I made a cross between pumpkin pie filling & ice cream for dessert. Soft serve pumpkin ice cream.

It’s vegan. It’s dairy-free. It's gluten-free. (Read: guilt-free) It’s delish!

It’s a take on my usual go-to frozen banana ice cream trick that I’ve made here & here.

Dairy-Free Fudgesicles

I always buy a big bunch of bananas with the anticipation that we will eat them before they turn completely brown. Lately, they’ve been turning brown on me more often than not. So we cut up the sugary sweet & pretty mushy bananas, put them in a zip top bag & freeze them. I use them in smoothies instead of ice & to make dairy-free chocolate ice cream. 

I mixed things up a tiny bit & made a different rendition of my go-to dairy-free chocolate ice cream & made homemade fudgesicles. The best part is - they only require 3 ingredients (4 if you count water) & they take just minutes to mix up. There's no dairy or sugar involved. You can make them in the morning, pop them in the freezer & they’ll be ready for an after (or before) dinner treat.

Homemade Ice Cream Sandwiches

This past memorial day weekend was anything but typical. It was cold & rainy on Saturday & then warm(ish) & sunny on Sunday & Monday.  To warm the house & our bellies up on Saturday I baked some chocolate chip cookies using my favorite go-to recipe.  On Sunday afternoon we decided to plan a small barbecue on Monday.  I was pretty excited to put the obscene amount of cookies to good use to make a traditional summer treat: ice cream sandwiches.  I added mini chocolate chips that I found in the baking aisle to mine so I guess you could call them homemade chipwiches!

Happy Friday! How is it already the last day of May???

Apple Crisp

Apple season is upon us. We embraced it in our house by eating an early September Apple Crisp.  I basically adapted this recipe that I made at the beach with blueberries this summer to make it with apples instead.  Find the complete recipe after the jump!

Blueberry Cobbler

After our shrimp boil we finished off the night with some fresh blueberry cobbler & ice cream (read: yum).  I came across this recipe that makes the basic cobbler a bit more figure friendly using a base of butter, greek yogurt, oats, sugar & whole wheat flour for the crumbly delicious topping (as opposed to the butter & sugar combo usually found in a cobbler recipe). I added some vanilla extract to the berry mixture & sprinkled some cinnamon on top of the crumbles.

You really can't go wrong with this recipe, be sure to check out SproutedKitchen.com for more yummy healthful recipes or better yet order the cookbook that's what I plan to do.

Dairy-Free Chocolate Ice Cream

Chris loves chocolate ice cream. One night when I made these cakes I realized I didn't have any ice cream at all, but I did have frozen bananas & cocoa powder. Problem solved. I freeze my bananas right before they call to the fruit flies, that's right when they're nearly all black - that just means they're super sweet, I break them up & freeze them in food storage bags.  Then I add them to smoothies or make this dairy-free chocolate ice cream out of them by simply blending the frozen bananas with a tablespoon of cocoa powder together. Et voila, you've got a cold creamy chocolatey ice cream like treat. If you're feeling frisky add some peanut butter & thank me later.

This is a great option for vegans & those who suffer from dairy allergies or if you just want to try a lighter ice cream especially in these heat waves we've been having lately.

Happy Friday!
 

Hot Molten Chocolate Cake

Everyone always has room for dessert when it's hot molten chocolate cake, with ice cream of course.  This dessert is not as hard as it looks to make but there is some love involved. It's not what I would call a call-me-maybe-dessert, this isn't for a first date.  This is for the date when you celebrate you first wedding anniversary. This is a you-count-big-time-in-my-book-dessert.  For those of you that I've made this for - you know who you are- & yes I'll make it for you again.

This recipe is built out of some I found online & through some basic trial & error.  But lucky you, you don't have to do the leg work because you get my full recipe after the jump, so read on for some more photos & the recipe!