I bet, after reading the headline, you know what we are celebrating. Yes, you’re right: It’s soon St. Patrick’s Day! And that means it’s time to enjoy delicious green-colored treats. And for some, it also means boozier indulgences. I certainly have you covered: The rich and creamy lemon cheesecake ice cream is naturally colored with delicate, spring-like green color (stay tuned to meet the ultimate plant-based ketogenic green color!) and topped with adults-only boozy whiskey syrup — which is ready in less than a minute. Also, the ice cream is easy to make. Just blend everything in a blender, let churn in an ice cream maker, and dig in! You can naturally serve this frozen treat year around; it makes a perfect summertime treat, too!
The best thing is, you can indulge liberally with this ice cream: it’s sugar-free, ketogenic, and super nutritious. It’s also an excellent way to add natural, healthy fats to your diet and makes a great fat bomb! What a perfect way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day!
Tips for making the Green Lemon Cheesecake Ice Cream and the Whiskey Syrup
There are no tricks needed when preparing the ice cream; it’s super simple! I guess grating the lemon peel and squeezing the juice is the most laborious part. Other than that, just a little mixing and churning, and that’s it!
The lemon peel and juice give the ultimate, elegant lemon taste. When grating the lemon, grate just the yellow peel. Discard the white pith, as it’s unappetizingly bitter. When you use a high-speed blender, the lemon peel will be chopped into tiny pieces, so tiny you cannot even notice them. For me, pieces of lemon peel in any food is a complete turn-off. However, effective blending ensures the peels will be chopped well enough, so the result is smooth.
And I promised to reveal the ultimate plant-based ketogenic green color. (You might even guess what it is!) It’s avocado! Yes, that fatty little fruit is full of essential nutrients, but it also lends its beautiful green color to different dishes. In this ice cream, the color is especially beautiful, light, cheerful spring-like green. Indeed, there are other healthy ways to color your food green; I’ve used, for example, spirulina and kale, both nutritious and delicious options (and you don’t even taste them, even if you use them in desserts!)
This recipe makes 4 servings. I have a new ice cream maker that makes a larger amount of ice cream than my previous one. I actually could have made even a double portion with it. If I remember right, the previous ice cream maker could make 1 liter (a bit over 4 cups) of ice cream (I always made much less), while this new machine easily makes 1.5 liters (some 6.3 cups) of ice cream. Please adjust the amount of ice cream mixture according to your ice cream maker.
And the whiskey syrup then? Now THAT is the easiest part! Just take some Sukrin Gold Syrup and pour in a little Irish whiskey. Mix well until smooth. That’s it! This syrup with Irish whiskey is a must-have for any adults-only St. Patrick’s Day celebration! You can serve it with almost any sweet treat.
My ice cream and syrup experiments
It’s just a couple of days until St. Patrick’s Day. I actually wasn’t planning to post any seasonal recipes to my blog. No, I had plenty of other ideas, and I had done lots of other experiments (stay tuned for those, I will post them soon!). But mostly, I was busy finishing my coming cookbook. Yes, I have been writing a cookbook and putting all my effort in that. If you wonder why there haven’t been too many new recipes on my blog after Christmas, that is the reason. So, I’ve finished the book (and I’m really satisfied with it, so is the publisher!), but unfortunately, I cannot reveal anything more detailed yet. Don’t worry, though, soon I can tell you much more about it!
But, this morning, I suddenly got an idea of green cheesecake ice cream for St. Patrick’s Day. Yesterday, I made a lemon cheesecake shake with avocado, and it became beautifully green — and super delicious! That’s what gave me the idea of preparing something for the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.
I actually hadn’t made any cheesecake ice cream before (or maybe I have… I just had no notes on that), so I just was pondering the ingredients and the amounts. Well, cheesecake needs naturally cream cheese and sweetener. Powdered erythritol was the best option to sweeten the ice cream; it dissolved perfectly and didn’t have a bad aftertaste.
For the green color, I was thinking of several options: kale, avocado, spirulina, greens powder. Avocado seemed to be the ultimate choice; it would give richness and thicken the ice cream mixture.
With avocado, I needed lemon. Avocado just cries for lemon! To be honest, I CANNOT eat avocado without something citrus-flavored, be it lemon, lime, or red grapefruit. (Naturally, if I make a chocolate-flavored avocado treat, I drop the citrus; chocolate and avocado are a perfect match and they need nothing else!)
Lemon juice wasn’t enough to give lemon flavor. In my opinion, the taste is of lemon juice is pretty flat. Whenever I can, I use lemon peel in addition to lemon juice. It has much more multidimensional and elegant lemon flavor than lemon juice. So, I decided to grate one lemon and squeeze the juice from it. I had no idea how much juice I would need, but I decided to start with 1 tablespoon and add more if needed.
There was still one ingredient missing. Fluid. My nowadays preferred no-carb non-caloric fluid is unsweetened almond milk. Luckily, I have found a brand with nothing suspicious in it. So many (especially US-based) brands contain terrible thickeners, like carrageenan. Or then they contain weird food additives and starches (i.e. sugars), like rice starch. Naturally, the best option is to make your own almond milk, but if you are busy, try to grab a commercial that has no food additives and no carrageenan, and absolutely no starch! Commercial almond milks have added vitamins and minerals. If you eat nutritious food, these added vitamins and minerals don’t really bring any benefits. But I guess they will do no harm, either.
So, after some serious pondering and writing notes, I took my ingredients, placed them in a blender, and brrrrrrrummm, blended everything into a smooth, beautifully colored light green mixture.
I tasted the mixture. Oh yesssss! What a luscious and rich taste! I could have eaten the whole batch just like that. (I actually ate a substantial amount, but don’t tell anyone!)
So, I managed to be patient and let the mixture churn in my relatively new ice cream maker. After some 20 or 30 minutes, the ice cream was ready. This cheap ice cream maker bought from Lidl did a much better job than my previous ice cream maker of a well-known brand. This ice cream tasted rich, creamy, but still refreshing!
I was already taking the photo shots for this blog post, when it suddenly hit me: whiskey syrup! Yes, that is something crazy (or crazily delicious!) for St. Patrick’s Day! I had some Sukrin Gold syrup, to which I decided to add some whiskey. I had no idea whether the result would taste good or inedible, but I tried it immediately, while I was doing the photo shooting preparations and had the ready ice cream waiting in the freezer.
Luckily, I had some Irish whiskey. I had bought it exactly one year ago, obviously to experiment with some St. Patrick’s Day treats, which I never managed to publish… But now, it was about time! (And luckily, booze doesn’t get old and spoil!). Now, for those who fear gluten in whiskey; the gluten gets removed during the whiskey preparation process, so there is no gluten left in whiskey. However, it has been reported that some very sensitive persons do get symptoms from whiskey or other grain-based booze, even though there should be no gluten. So, consider your individual tolerance if you plan to make this treat.
For my first experiment, I took 1/4 cup (60 ml) Sukrin Gold Syrup and poured it into a small bowl. I added 2 tablespoons Irish whiskey and mixed with a spoon until smooth.
The result was really strong but delicious! In the end, I preferred sweeter and milder whiskey syrup, so I added 20 milliliters more Sukrin Gold syrup to get altogether 1/3 cup (80 ml) Sukrin Gold Syrup in the whiskey syrup. For the final recipe, I was planning to use 1/4 cup (60 ml) Sukrin Gold Syrup and 1 tablespoon Irish whiskey. Perfect for my taste buds, but please feel free to experiment for the best result for your taste buds!
But, you must be eagerly waiting for the recipes, so here they are:
- 1 organic lemon
- 2 ripe Hass avocados, peeled, pitted and cubed
- 8 oz = 230 g full-fat cream cheese
- 2/3 cup = 160 ml = 4 oz powdered erythritol, like Sukrin Melis OR Confectioner's Style Swerve
- 1 cup = 240 ml unsweetened almond milk
- 1/4 cup = 60 ml Sukrin Gold Syrup
- 1-2 tablespoons Irish whiskey
- Grate the yellow-colored peel from the lemon and place the grated peel in a blender jar.
- Squeeze the juice from the lemon. Add 1 tablespoon of the juice to the blender jar with the lemon peel. Use the rest of the juice for other purposes.
- Place the rest of the ingredients also to the blender jar.
- Blend until smooth.
- Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and let churn according to the manufacturer's instructions.
- Serve immediately as soft-serve ice, or freeze until preferred consistency.
- Pour the Sukrin Gold Syrup and the whiskey into a small bowl. Stir with a spoon until smooth.
This ice cream is awesome… I’m addicted for sure and it’s so easy and fast to put together. I didn’t have almond milk so I made some cashew milk and it worked very nicely. Ingenious. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you, Marybeth! So great to hear you like it! This ice cream is my new favorite, too 🙂
Can you give us the brand of almond milk that you found without the goofy additives? Or share a link? I would really like to find one without having to make my own. And, BTW, your recipe sounds delicious. In both its original form and the suggested variations.
Hi Laura, thanks for your comment! I live in Finland and use Alpro, which unfortunately is not very widely available globally. It does contain thickeners (like locust bean which in my opinion is pretty natural anyway), but at least it doesn’t contain carrageenan or starches.
Have you tried freezing this at all? With previous recipes that I’ve tried that don’t have alcohol or glycerin or something else like that in it they seem to freeze into a solid chunk. Wondering how this would hold up or if it is more of an instant-eat lol
Yep, I’ve tried. All homemade ice creams will freeze rock hard if you don’t use alcohol or glycerin (or some ugly food additives). You just want to a) freeze it until it reached preferred consistency (remember to mix it every now and then) or b) if it’s rock hard, let it stay at room temperature for 15-30 minutes. If somebody has any better ideas I’m all ears 🙂