Super delicious, smooth and creamy, high-in-protein, sugar-free and keto mint chocolate chip ice cream? Yes, it's all possible and will exceed your expectations!
Since one of our favorite flavors of ice cream is mint chocolate chip, we HAD to get this ice cream just right or else we wouldn't have ever been satisfied. And, after many attempts, we're pretty darn happy with this smooth and creamy, sweet and minty, chocolate-crunchy ice cream.
Whenever we make it, we have no problem wolfing it down. There are no regrets when eating it either. Why? Because it's high in protein (43 percent of calories!), low in calories (just 243 per serving), low in carbs (3 grams of net carbs), and sugar-free.
And you certainly wouldn't guess it's a healthier ice cream when you eat it. It tastes just as yummy, if not better, than most of the mint chocolate chip ice creams out there. But, as we've said before, much of the credit goes to the Ninja Creami (and not us) since it allows you to create rich, smooth and creamy ice cream with non-standard ingredients
Ingredients for this high-protein, low-carb ice cream include unsweetened almond milk, protein powder, erythritol, peppermint extract, guar gum and sugar-free chocolate chips.
Be sure to check out our other Ninja Creami keto ice creams, too: Keto Butter Pecan Ice Cream and High-Protein, Keto Chocolate Ice Cream
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Ingredients
- Unsweetened almond milk: To create the right consistency, you need a liquid. We use unsweetened almond milk since it's keto-friendly and low in calories. You may substitute with another type of low-carb milk like unsweetened macadamia milk.
- Vanilla protein powder: We use a vanilla whey protein powder to increase the protein in this ice cream. Our favorite vanilla protein powder is Quest Vanilla Milkshake. However, you may use your favorite vanilla protein powder.
- Powdered erythritol: We use Swerve Confectioners Sweetener, but you can use any of brand of erythritol sweetener.
- Peppermint extract: Peppermint produced the best flavor in our taste tests. Spearmint, even in small amounts, made the ice cream taste like spearmint gum or toothpaste.
- Sugar-free Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips: We use Lily's Semi-Sweet Baking Chips in this recipe. You could substitute sugar-free dark chocolate chips if preferred.
- Guar Gum: Guar gum is thickening agent that helps create a creamy texture in ice creams and sorbets. You may substitute with xanthan gum, but the texture may not turn out as creamy.
- Green food coloring: Although coloring is optional, it sure does add to the appeal of the ice cream!
HOW TO MAKE
STEP 1: Combine all the ingredients in a blender or food processor and pulse until fully mixed and smooth in consistency.
STEP 2: Pour the blended mixture into a Ninja Creami pint container and place in the freezer. Let freeze for at least 24 hours.
STEP 3: After freezing, take the lid off the pint container and place in the Ninja Creami outer bowl. Install the Creami paddle into the outer bowl lid, place the lid on the outer bowl and lock into place according to the instructions in the Creami manual. Select the Lite Ice Cream mode, and it will spin for several minutes.
STEP 4: When it stops spinning, take the container out and assess the consistency of the ice cream. If it's powdery in texture as shown in picture 4 (as opposed to creamy and smooth), then you'll need to respin.
STEP 5: If you need to respin, place the outer bowl lid back on and lock it back into the Ninja creami and push respin.
STEP 6: After it's done respining, take out the outer bowl and assess the ice cream consistency. If its smooth and creamy, as shown in picture 6, then add the green food coloring.
STEP 7: Create an indent in the center of the ice cream (there should already be a small indent from spinning) and add the sugar-free chips.
STEP 8: After, return it to the Ninja Creami and press the mix-in button to incorporate. When done spinning, serve immediately and enjoy!
STORING THE ICE CREAM
Ice cream made by the Ninja Creami is best when eaten immediately. Since it's not made with standard ingredients and in the same manner as regular ice cream, it does not store as well as traditional ice cream.
If you have leftovers, we recommend letting the ice cream melt until soft (which happens fairly quickly) and then storing it back in a Creami pint since you'll likely need to re-run the Creami on it after it re-hardens. Be sure to flatten the surface of the ice cream in the pint before placing it in the freezer.
To serve, simply re-run the Creami process again or respin the ice cream (as it may be frozen) until smooth and creamy.
WHY THE NINJA CREAMI CAN MAKE ICE CREAM OUT OF ALMOST ANYTHING
With traditional ice cream machines, the ice cream is stored in the freezer so it has to maintain its creamy texture while in there. Keeping a liquid creamy at freezing temperatures requires a careful balance of ingredients. For example, in traditional ice cream, if you reduce the amount of sugar in the mixture it will get too hard in the freezer to be ice cream.
By contrast, with the Ninja Creami you start by freezing your mixture into a solid and then the Creami pulverizes it to create ice cream. The benefit of this approach is almost any mixture will freeze to a solid. This is especially useful in low calorie or protein ice creams with non-standard ingredients that won't stay creamy in the traditional ice cream making process. The trade off is that you have to eat it right away and it can't be stored like traditional ice cream.
Related Recipes
If you try this recipe, we would love to hear your feedback! Leave a comment, rate it, and tag @lowcarbsimplified on your photo of this recipe on Instagram or Facebook. We hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do!
Recipe
High Protein, Keto Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream in the Ninja Creami
Equipment
- Ninja Creami (Use the 1x conversion button below if you have the original CREAMi)
- Ninja Creami Deluxe (Use the 1.5x conversion button below if you have the Creami Deluxe)
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsweetened almond milk
- 1 scoop Quest Vanilla Milkshake Protein Powder
- ¼ teaspoon guar gum
- 3 tablespoons Swerve Confectioners
- ⅛ teaspoon peppermint extract
- 3 drops green food coloring (optional)
- 28 grams Lily's Semi-Sweet Baking Chips
Instructions
- Blend ingredients: Combine all the ingredients in a blender or food processor and pulse until fully mixed and smooth in consistency.
- Freeze: Pour the blended mixture into a Ninja Creami pint container and place in the freezer. Let sit for at least 24 hours.
- Turn to ice cream in the Ninja Creami: After freezing, take the lid off the pint and place in the Ninja Creami outer bowl. Install the Creami paddle into the pint lid, put on the outer bowl and lock into place. Select the Lite Ice Cream mode, and it will spin for several minutes.
- Respin if necessary: When it stops spinning, take the container out and assess the consistency of the ice cream. If it's a powdery in texture (as opposed to creamy and smooth), then you'll need to respin. To respin, place the pint container back in the Ninja creami and push respin. After it's done, take out and assess the ice cream consistency. If it's still powdery, then respin until smooth.
- Finish and and serve: When ice cream is smooth, then you'll add the food coloring and sugar-free chips. Add three drops of food coloring and create an indent in the center of the ice cream (there should already be a small indent from spinning) and add the sugar-free chips. After, return it to the Ninja Creami and press the mix-in button to incorporate. When done spinning, serve immediately and enjoy!
Notes
- This recipe was designed for the original Ninja Creami. If you have the Ninja Creami Deluxe use the 1.5x conversion button in the ingredients section of the recipe card to adjust the ingredient amounts.
- If you have leftovers, we recommend letting the ice cream melt until soft (which happens fairly quickly) and then storing it back in a Creami pint since you'll likely need to re-run the Creami on it after it re-hardens. Be sure to flatten the surface of the ice cream in the pint before placing it in the freezer. To serve, simply re-run the Creami process again or respin the ice cream (as it may be frozen) until smooth and creamy.
I quite agree the peppermint can hide some off-putting flavors! It can completely mask the musky/musty flavor of canned coconut when doing a full fat dairy free version (ninjatestkitchen) but with Swerve confectioner's. I wouldn't recommend trying to use organic food coloring as the green is peculiarly olive toned (just tried it - even with extra blue added) and the standard green is made from petrochemicals. The color just gets even odder when leftovers are re-spun to pulverize the chocolate chips. This recipe is creamier if you use/make evap. alt. milk, but that's more work and a few more calories. In respect to calories, did you forget to divide by 3 in your nutritional info? By my ballpark, the numbers reflected seem to belong to the whole batch (30 something for 1 c almond milk, 100 something for 1 scoop protein powder and 100 for 2 servings of SF chips). At less than 250 calories, I'll consume the whole thing - so no problem!
Yes we've avoided the evaporated milk due to the calories and the level of carbohydrates it contains. And you're correct: We accidentally wrote the nutrition info for the whole pint and not per serving (maybe because we usually eat the whole thing..). We've fixed it now but thanks for catching this!
What is the serving size? The entire pint?
Serving size is approximately 2/3 cup to matche the official serving size for ice cream. There are 3 servings in this recipe and it slightly less than fills the pint, so it's actually slightly less than 2/3 cup.
I have used and loved my Ninja Creami everyday for at least 6 months.
I have been gluten-free, sugar-free, dairy-free and chemical-free for over 25 years. I have made almost every recipe I could find for nondairy, sugar-free Ninja recioes adhering to my dietary restrictions. I must say your chocolate, chocolate peppermint and butter pecan are unequivocally the best, most creamy and delicious I have made thus far.
I would love to see a keto nondairy vanilla recipe. Your vanilla recipe looks delectable, however, I can't use the heavy cream :o(.
Thank you for providing superb, easy to make, absolutely glorious keto ice creams to make in my "best purchase of 2022" my Ninja Creami.
Thank you.
So happy to hear! We initially tried to make our sugar-free vanilla ice cream as dairy-free (and with almond milk instead). We did so many iterations of it, but we couldn't get it to taste right. Vanilla has been one of the hardest flavors to create since it's so simple and reveals any taste issues that bolder flavors seem to hide. We're still working on it though and hope to come up with something soon. One question: do you consider whey protein to be non-dairy?
The Ninja Test Kitchen has a dairy-free vanilla recipe using canned full-fat coconut milk. I find it musky/musty so the peppermint here totally saved it for me when added in a re-spin. I also successfully used the confectioner's sweetener and 1/4 tsp guar gum that Cathy and Ishan so often do to adapt that. I had feared the fat level would have required allulose, but no crystals with confectioner's Swerve! Your problem with dairy must stem mostly from casein so that you can do the whey successfully. If that is so, stay away from Keto Chow (meal replacement shake powder) since the bulk of their base is milk protein powder (80% casein and 20% whey). I only know because I just bought some milk protein isolate to play with for flavor as I am not loving the whey on "delicate" flavors. Seems we're all in search of a "good" vanilla that isn't several hundreds of calories!
Fascinating that worked for you with swerve. The casein is an interesting theory. Another possibility is that coconut milk just is lower in fat being helpful (heavy cream looks like it has 2.5x the fat) and that the lower fat level is allowing for better solubility of the erythritol. To confirm, you used this recipe https://ninjatestkitchen.com/recipe/dairy-free-vanilla-coconut-ice-cream/ but substituted the 1/2 cup sugar with 1/2 cup confectioner's sweetener and added 1/4 tsp guar gum? What brand coconut milk did you use?
HI, I just checked my notes. It was a 14 oz full-fat unsw. canned coconut milk but I did not record the brand. I misstated above that there was no allulose involved as I noted I used 1/2 c confectioner's swerve plus 1/4 c allulose since I feared excess erythritol would crystallize but I hoped less allulose wouldn't bother my stomach so. I also used 3 tsp vanilla originally trying to combat the flavor. So sorry, we can't determine the fat content without the brand. I may have done the original spin too early the first day as it appeared to be soft serve and returned it to freezer for the next day. The next day is when I spun it anew, I tasted it then doctored it with the mint extract to re-spin. I do not know it the extra spin or the early spin had any effect on the texture or the extra alcohol from so much extract. Would need to run a clean non-incremental batch to really know, I regret if this muddied the waters trying to find that high-fat/allulose to low-fat/erythritol pivot point.
No worries. Looked over a few different brands and they are roughly similar in fat content. That it worked at all and with allulose in combination is good to know, especially for future recipes.
Hello,
If you subtract the peppermint would the taste be comparable t vanilla ice cream?
Sort of, but not really. We tried it and it tasted a little too artificial - it just wasn't quite right. We do have a Ninja Creami keto vanilla ice cream on the blog (https://lowcarbsimplified.com/ninja-creami-keto-vanilla-ice-cream/) but it's not high protein. But we're still hoping to make a vanilla ice cream that tastes decent and is low in carbs and high in protein.
Hi again! I happened upon another brand of Vanilla Whey protein powder available in stores at Walmart - ISOPURE - that tastes clean enough to add vanilla extract (1 1/2 tsp) and vanilla bean pod (1) scrapings to to make a good protein-based vanilla. So triple vanilla. Funny that the unflavored version from the same brand which I was using previously didn't taste as good.
Funny enough we did try Isopure unflavored in the past and it didn't work for us either but we hadn't tried the vanilla one. We'll have to try that! They have more than one vanilla (creamy vanilla and Tahitian vanilla). Which one did you use?
I was using the ISOPURE creamy vanilla - I'll look for the Tahitian and give it a try sometime! I tried the Dymatize Cocoa Pebbles and was having a hard time finishing it up due to the after taste until I added the stronger extracts of banana, almond or mint. Just so hard to anticipate how the different brands and flavor formulas will hit each person's palate I guess. I've got some scraped vanilla bean pods (left over from making the ice cream) steeping in some vodka right now to make a double strength extract. Will keep you apprised.
Your creami recipes only have 1 cup of milk, are you doubling recipe to fill the pint?
No, we blend it in a blender with other ingredients, and when blended with the other ingredients, it results in a pint or little less (75% of a pint).
Hi
Im late to the game with the creami etc. However, you are the 2nd person Ive heard say you "blend" items before you put them in the ninja creami. The other person indicated you have to do that. Seems like a lot of extra gadgets to get the ice cream. Am In understanding this correctly?
Thank you
I know its seems crazy to use another appliance (blender), but you need to make sure it's mixed thoroughly since you want to have a uniform distribution of the ingredients. You could do it by hand in theory (depending on the recipe), but it would need to be mixed very well. In addition, many recipes, including ours, use emulsifiers (xanthan gum, instant pudding, guar gum, etc.) that need a high amount of shear velocity to mix well. So, the easiest method is to quickly blend for several seconds.
I mostly use a 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup and a whisk. I whisk after I add each each ingredient to the alternative milk. If not whisked after each, the ingredients will indeed glom onto each other and make an awful lump that will not break up smoothly. I do not have any trouble incorporating any of the ingredients excepting additional cocoa powder which takes just a bit more work. There are already emulsifiers in the flavored whey proteins that help. The whisk method makes for easy clean up but does not incorporate much air into the mixture. I generally add 1/4 cup more milk than the recipe calls for when whisking. That will change the macros a tiny bit. Hope this helps!
Thanks for the comment!