Have you seen the viral videos of folks making homemade ice cream with cottage cheese? It looks quite simple: Cottage cheese is blended with a sweetener—honey, sugar, agave, etc.—and frozen. Yumna Jawad of Feel Good Foodie flavored hers with frozen strawberries, graham crackers, and honey. NYT Cooking posted a version with Nutella, hazelnuts, and Ferrero Rocher.
Both sounded delicious, but would it truly satisfy an ice cream craving? I had my doubts.
It's cottage cheese after all—not something I'd describe as delicious. I only buy it when I need to test a recipe that calls for it. No one else in my family likes it either. Would freezing it and calling it ice cream make it taste any better? I had to try it for myself, so I set off to make a version inspired by my favorite store-bought pint: Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream, a luscious and creamy vanilla ice cream with caramel swirls and pieces of chocolate-covered waffle cone.
An unflavored cottage cheese ice cream only requires whole milk cottage cheese (labeled as 4% Milkfat) and a sweetener. But I couldn’t deprive myself of the opportunity to add flavors. Here are the ingredients I used:
1/4 cup chopped bittersweet chocolate(You can use chocolate chips.)
1/4 cup crumbled salted pretzels (I didn’t have waffle cones or cookies on hand, which is what Ben & Jerry’s add to Americone Dream.)
You start by blending the cottage cheese until it is smooth. Most Reels I’ve seen blend the cottage cheese in a food processor or blender. Then I saw Vaughn Vreeland whip his cottage cheese right in its container using an immersion blender. It’s a smart tool that makes clean-up easy, plus you can freeze the ice cream in the container, so that's what I did.
I added agave and vanilla extract to the cottage cheese. Then I blended it using an immersion blender for a solid five minutes, moving the stick up and down to incorporate as much air as possible until the cottage cheese looked smooth, light, and fluffy.
The plastic tub that holds the cottage cheese is a tight fit once you start incorporating ingredients and air into the cottage cheese. It requires a nifty bit of sleight of hand to make sure the cottage cheese doesn’t overflow. Transfer the mixture into a wider bowl if you’d like. I like living on the edge—of almost spilling over!
I dolloped the caramel sauce on top—it’s best cold straight from the fridge so that it doesn’t melt into the cottage cheese, which will give you caramel-flavored ice cream—and folded it into the cottage cheese using a spoon. Then, I folded in the chocolate and pretzels too.
I had to cover the tub with plastic wrap instead of its lid because I ended up with an overfilled mound on top. You can transfer yours into a larger lidded vessel.
I froze it for about six hours, which is the ideal freeze time for my freezer. The next day it was frozen solid and impossible to scoop—one downside to homemade cottage cheese ice cream. (If that happens to you, set it on your kitchen counter and wait until it softens. I know it's hard to wait, but that's the only way. I wouldn't microwave the plastic tub.)
Endless Possibilities For Flavors
The best part of making homemade cottage cheese ice cream is the endless possibilities for flavors. Here are a few ideas:
Frozen cherries and chopped dark chocolate
Espresso powder, vanilla extract, and sea salt
Unsweetened cocoa powder and brownie pieces
Frozen fruit, like mango, strawberries, passion fruit, raspberries, bananas
Pumpkin purée and pumpkin pie spice
My kids thought the cottage cheese ice cream was store-bought ice cream yogurt. They loved it and suggested adding the following flavors next time. If this looks like the Dairy Queen Blizzard Treats menu, it’s true.
Mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, crumbled graham crackers
Pecans, chocolate chips, caramel sauce
Mini M&M’s
Crumbled Oreo Cookies
Chopped Butterfingers, Heath, Snickers, or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Just sprinkles!
The Verdict
I was not surprised that cottage cheese ice cream is not the same as the thick, luscious, and creamy Ben & Jerry’s I keep stocked in my freezer. Not even close. It’s lighter, icier, and not as creamy as regular ice cream because it has a lot less fat. Full-fat cottage cheese has about 4 percent fat, while most ice cream is made with cream, which typically has at least 36 percent fat.That's a huge difference!
Does it feel like I was promised ice cream, but ended up with something worse? Quite the opposite! It's a frozen treat that would satisfy my craving for something cold, sweet, and creamy. Cottage cheese is a little tangy, so the flavor reminds me of frozen yogurt, which I love. My kids were not aware I was trying out the recipe and thought I had bought frozen yogurt at the grocery store. For all these reasons, I would highly recommendyou try this.
“While there is no denying that cottage cheese ice cream offers a lower calorie count, less saturated fat and higher amount of protein compared to ice cream, adding a ton of sugary mix-ins will quickly increase the calorie count and amount of added sugar,” warned dietitian Dana Angelo White in an article for the Food ...
Freshly made ice cream is smoother and tastes fresher too. And because you're not forced to use unhealthy levels of fat as you would with no churn ice creams, the flavors can come through stronger and brighter.
To make sure that your cottage cheese ice cream doesn't get icy, once you've placed it in the freezer, give it a good fold every 30 minutes. Cottage cheese has a good amount of water, so once you freeze it, that water will also freeze. Keep it creamy with this quick step.
“It is creamy ice cream with low calories and no sugar,” Gomez said. “It is also gluten-free, kosher and protein-rich.” A 2/3-cup serving of Halo Top vanilla bean ice cream contains 100 calories, 7 total grams of sugar, 2 total grams of fat and 6 grams of protein. Each container includes 3 servings.
Homemade ice cream usually contains much less air than the stuff you buy in the store. Air keeps ice cream soft. So the less there is, the harder your ice cream. It can also be caused by low fat or sugar content.
Soft serve ice cream typically has a lower milk fat content compared to regular ice cream. While regular ice cream is made with a higher percentage of milk fat and also includes egg yolks, soft serve does not require these ingredients.
The short answer is yes, but it's not always recommended. Cottage cheese does not freeze particularly well. Freezing cottage cheese can change the texture and taste of the food. It is safe to freeze cottage cheese, but some of the liquid is lost, giving it a chunkier consistency.
Its popularity has grown in the last few decades, and it's often recommended as part of a healthy diet. It's not only high in protein but also essential nutrients. For these reasons, it's widely used by athletes and featured in many weight loss plans.
Cheeses generally retain their flavor after freezing, but they can become crumbly and mealy and are thus harder to slice. Processed cheese slices, cream cheese, cottage cheese, and ricotta do not freeze well, although cream cheese can be blended with heavy cream and then frozen for later use in dips and icings.
So far, these two high-protein snacks are neck in neck when considering protein, calcium and calories. But one clear distinction steers the choice: Cottage cheese can be loaded with sodium. Just 1 cup of cottage cheese can deliver 8 to 9 times the sodium found in Greek yogurt.
Huneke gives an analysis, “nu*tritionally speaking, plain Greek yogurt is the closest comparison (to cottage cheese) – they're both lower in calories (the 0-2% fat versions), high in protein, a good source of calcium, contain no added sugars, and have lower levels of lactose (so they're among the more easily-tolerated ...
Cottage cheese is a mild and fresh food made from curdled milk. Cottage cheese has some health benefits, as it is rich in protein, relatively low in fat, and high in calcium, B vitamins, and vitamin A. After draining, the curds are washed to remove residual acids, giving cottage cheese a sweeter taste.
Some options mimic the look and feel of regular ice cream but don't contain all of the calories and fat. Those include Halo Top, Enlightened, and Sweet Habit. Frozen yogurt is also a great alternative that gives you that frozen treat feel but with the same health benefits as yogurt.
Choosing a low-fat cottage cheese can reduce saturated fat intake when substituting it for other higher fat foods, such as cream cheese, sour cream, mayonnaise or ricotta cheese. It's also full of vitamins and minerals that support a healthy diet. It contains vitamins like phosphorus, potassium and vitamin B12.
Ultimately, it depends on the recipes being used, but, generally speaking, soft serve tends to be the healthier choice between the two. This is due to the fact that soft serve contains around 3%-6% of milk fat, while ice cream must contain at least 10% by federal law.
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