Ice Cream – The Natural Alternative

There are hundreds of ice cream flavors on the market. And many of them taste very good. Unfortunately, most ice cream is full of fake stuff… high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, preservatives, etc. Yuck.

I have found a great alternative. No, not some fancy expensive alternative. Just Breyer’s Natural Vanilla. It’s all ingredients that I understand (cream, milk, sugar, etc.) and a delicious vanilla bean flavor. You know there is real vanilla bean in it, because you can see the little flecks.

Now, vanilla is good (it gets a bad rap for being “plain”, but vanilla is a complex flavor of its own), but sometimes it gets old. So, I dress it up. Some things are somewhat obvious: fresh or frozen strawberries, blueberries, or raspberries, chopped nuts, whipped cream. You may not have thought about it, but egg nog and other cream liqueur like Bailey’s Irish Cream tastes wonderful over ice cream (just a little bit, for flavor). I’m not crazy about chocolate (I know, it’s crazy, but I just don’t like chocolate that much!) but my son and husband love it. So I often top the ice cream with shaved chocolate. Just take a potato peeler and your favorite chocolate (white, dark, or milk, and any flavor combination) and pretend that the chocolate bar is a carrot. You don’t need very much to add a lot of flavor and pizazz to ice cream. This is especially good with raspberries.

One of my favorite flavors to add to ice cream is juice concentrate. It may sound weird, but it adds a great kick. A spoon or two of 100% juice orange juice, berry punch, or lemonade concentrate over vanilla ice cream adds a great flavor, but is just juice, with no extra sugar or artificial junk. It’s about as healthy as ice cream can get.

Do you have a natural ice cream topping to add? Comment here.

Thanks to Roswitha Schacht and Morguefile.com for the pic!