Kinda Not Really Sugar Free Lemon Yogurt Ice Cream
You need an ice cream maker for this one.
“Nothing is truly sugar free” ice cream
700g Greek yogurt (10% fat is nicest but 5% fat works too)
1 large lemon
1 lime
1/2 cup sweetener – what you’d normally use to sweeten tea or coffee.
Zest the lemon and the lime, then juice them both. Mix the lemon and lime juice in with the yogurt and mix well. Add the sweetener and continue to mix. Throw in the zest, keep on mixing, then pour into your ice cream maker.
It is worth tasting the mixture before making it into ice cream. If it is too tart for you, add some more sweetener and mix well.
You can also make this by hand, by freezing for an hour or two, churning it with a fork, freezing it again, churning it with a fork again and so on, until your ice cream has a somewhat fluffy consistency. This won’t be as nice and smooth as ice cream from a machine, but it’s still perfectly doable.
Please remember that this is not 100% sugar free. There is always a small amount of carbohydrate in both yogurt and citrus fruits. There will also be a somewhat high amount of carbohydrate if you use a sweetener mixed with sugar, or if you use a ‘natural sweetener’ like agave syrup. If you don’t want the recipe to be sugar free, you can replace the sweetener with a 1/2 cup of sugar. Candarel and other artificial sweeteners using Aspartame are often sweeter than normal sugar. Whatever sweetener you use, you should taste the mixture before making it into ice cream as sweeteners and brands vary wildly.
Actually, while we’re here, I want to point something out. A lot of recipes will say they are sugar free when they’re not really. Many times, a sugar free recipe is conventional sugar free, it doesn’t use your standard white or brown sugar and instead uses a sweetener of some sort. But these recipes still have SOME carbohydrate in them.
My point is, sugar free does not mean carbohydrate free. If you’re someone on a low carbohydrate diet or someone like me who’s diabetic and needs to keep an eye on carb intake, then these ‘sugar free’ recipes are massive sources of disappointment. They’re not sugar free, really. They just have different types of carbohydrate that will still affect my blood sugar and still possibly cause people with working pancreases to create insulin to deal with their freshly made recipe.
Natural sweeteners are the worst. While they are not as carb-filled as normal cane sugar, they are still carbohydrates. Many of them are actually still sugar, they’re just fructose instead of glucose. The biggest offenders are things like carob syrup, agave syrup or one I saw earlier, rice syrup. The clue is in the name. Its a syrup. It’s sugar in liquid form.
Stevia is the only natural sweetener that is pretty alright and actually does what it claims to do, having very low calories and a low Glycemic Index value. The only thing that puts me off using it is how expensive it is here. I’m looking at €5-7 for just 250g of the stuff.
When it comes to artificial sweeteners, it’s worth mentioning that these are all tested before they are allowed into foods. Aspartame in particular has been demonized for ages, but it’s one of the most tested food products around. You’ll only have a problem with aspartame if you have Phenylketonuria and are thus allergic to phenylalaline.
At the end of the day, just be careful, and look at the nutritional values of things you buy. You’ll be surprised.