5-Ingredient Green Lemon Cheesecake Ice Cream and 2-Ingredient Whiskey Syrup

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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:

 

 

Nutrition information for the ice cream:

Nutrition information	Protein	Fat	Net carbs	kcal
In total:	18.9 g	90.9 g	9.4 g	976 kcal
Per serving if 4 servings in total:	4.7 g	22.7 g	2.3 g	244 kcal

 

Nutrition information for the whiskey syrup:

Nutrition information	Protein	Fat	Net carbs	kcal
In total:	trace	trace	3.6 g	126kcal
Per serving if 4 servings in total:	trace	trace	0.9 g	32 kcal

 

 

Tips for variation

If you would prefer even stronger green color, you can add 1/2 to 1 teaspoon spirulina powder or greens powder (c’mon, what could be a more delicious way to enjoy your greens?!). Those powders, however, might give some interesting aftertaste (which the whiskey syrup nicely covers, though), so another option is to add torn leaves from one large kale leaf. That shouldn’t give hardly any taste. Just remember to discard the stem of the kale and use just the leafy parts.

Nothing prevents you from omitting the lemon and adding 3 tablespoons dark, unsweetened cocoa powder for chocolate cheesecake ice cream. Maybe not a perfect option for St. Patrick’s Day, but if you add that whiskey to the ice cream, then we are talking!

Or, another option: omit the lemon. Add 1 serving instant coffee powder and that whiskey syrup to the ice cream. Another delicious treat for St. Patrick’s Day! You can even prepare another batch of whiskey syrup and serve it as topping. However, remember to enjoy in moderation, as that treat is very boozy!

In the summer, when preparing this treat, I might omit the lemon and add fresh strawberries or sugar-free strawberry jam to make strawberry cheesecake ice cream. Raspberry jam or blueberry jam sound like perfect options, too.