Eat Dessert….Only

One weekend when I was (probably) in middle school, my mom and I were going to be spending the evening alone together, and we decided our theme for the night would be “Life is uncertain, eat dessert first.”

I have no idea what we ate for dessert, and I’m pretty sure we had dessert, dinner, and then dessert again, but the overall memory surfaces for me once in a while as one of my favorite evenings with my mom. I always liked the idea of switching things around, and not conforming to someone else’s (or society’s) idea of what is normal or right. But the older we all get, it seems like the more we just conform to expectations, and even feel guilty when we go outside of the norms—for no reason!

Kristina and I have both recently discovered protein ice cream.  The BEST recipe we’ve found was posted by Heather from Heather Eats Almond Butter (p.s. if you don’t read her blog, you should start now!). After being really intent on following the recipes HEAB provided to a T, we gained the confidence to improvise (and actually have it sometimes turn out ok).  I’ll admit I’ve thrown entire batches of ice cream down the drain. I do believe though, that the successful attempts more than make up for those wasteful moments.

Here’s what I did today:

I followed the principles of HEAB’s recipes, but just improvised with whatever I had on hand. I used Vega Whole Food Heath Optimizer – Chocolate flavor (1 scoop), 1 TBSP Cacao powder, 1 TBSP Maca powder, 1 cup Almond milk, splash of vanilla extract, 1/2 tsp guar gum, 1/3 tsp xanthan gum, stevia (I eyeballed this), and about 10 extra large ice cubes.

I know it looks soupy and the color isn’t great because the lighting was horrible based on the current weather…RAIN!

This turned out to be one of my best ice creams yet. And it was my dinner. I’m so glad HEAB perfected this so I could copy it—she also has a video about how to do it in the recipe post I linked to above.  I’m guessing you could do it without a vita-mix blender, but it would be more difficult and probably not as smooth.  Don’t have a vita-mix?  Want to come over for some ice cream!?