3 Reasons Why I Should At Least Pretend to Diet

We usually break out the ice cream maker in the summer months, but the bug hit a bit late this year. I finally started making a few batches and once again I'm hooked on the ability to create all types of fun and new flavors of fatty frozen fabulousness. We are on our third flavor experiment so far and I already have lots of ideas and recipes waiting in the wings.

The first batch was a horchata ice cream that apparently was so good it did not last long enough to photograph. It actually was quite good. This was however the total cheater ice cream. I had, on a lark, purchased a horchata mix to easily make some of the yummy almond, cinnamon, rice milk drink for H's bday. I wanted to keep the horchata theme going since I had made horchata cupcakes with mini churros for her 1st birthday - including grinding rice, soaking overnight etc. Since we were having nearly 50 people over this year (yes, we broke down and got the giant inflatable cage, I mean bounce house, too) I wanted to streamline things, hence the mix. Of course, by the time things got rolling, I forgot to make horchata. So here we are with an empty fridge save for a half gallon of horchata concentrate and we want ice cream. The obvious solution was to mix the concentrate with some half and half (also left over from the party, because really, who was going to drink coffee when it was nearly 100 degrees outside?) some cinnamon, almond extract and some chopped mexican chocolate. Mix it up, chill it, throw it in the ice cream maker and boom, super-duper easy horchata ice cream that ended up quite the crowd pleaser.

After being such a cheat I decided I should redeem myself by making up my own recipe. Of course, this ended up not tasting as good, but it was healthy ice cream man, so you know, it had that going for it. I tried to keep it very easy so it would be replicable, which in turn had the effect of making it not taste good enough to want to replicate. That's not entirely true, it wasn't so bad that we didn't devour it in a day or two - in fact, R really liked it and would order it again. That's our test, we will often rate food we make by deciding if we were served this at a restaurant, a) would we go back to that restaurant? b) would you order the same dish? and c) would you recommend that dish (the highest compliment)?

Health Food Pina Colada Ice Cream
really, it's healthy, eat as much as you want, there's no cream

1 can coconut milk
1 can pineapple (I had a can of rings, so I used that, crushed would work, whatever)
1 individual size container of vanilla yogurt. (Plain would work, or I suppose even Pina Colada yogurt, but that's just getting silly)
approx. 1/4 C. honey
1/4 C. packed brown sugar
Zest from one lime
Juice from said lime


Chop the pineapple if you are using rings or chunks, mix it all together in a bowl and put it in the fridge to chill for a few hours, or overnight.


Put it in your ice cream maker and churn according to manufacturers directions.

Wow, now that I write it out, this looks like cheater ice cream too, but at least it's my cheater ice cream.

Chocolate Gelato

Now this one is worth repeating. I found this recipe at a favorite food blog Cafe Fernando. It's a starch based (not custard) gelato/ice cream. Again, quite easy, but amazingly delicious. Very rich, great texture (H said it was "chewy"). We will certainly be making this one again. I've now got a couple of David Lebovitz's recipes I am itching to try. Who's up for some Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream? Man that sounds good. We'll let you know.