We tried the cottage cheese ice cream trend
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It actually tastes good if you time it right. But who can babysit fake ice cream all day? Photo: Melissa Santos/Axios
If you are even halfway trying to increase your protein intake, you may have been inundated with videos on social media recently about making high-protein ice cream from cottage cheese. (Don't know what I'm talking about? See here.)
- After seeing seven or so videos about this concept, which involves blending cottage cheese with syrup or honey and other flavorings, then freezing it, I decided to give it a try.
Initially, I was obsessed. In particular, one version that uses strawberries and graham crackers I thought tasted a lot like strawberry cheesecake ice cream.
- I made several batches of it over the course of a week.
Yes, but: Cottage cheese ice cream is quite finicky, I soon discovered.
- You can't just make it and leave it in your freezer and enjoy it the next day.
- For most recipes that use two cups or so of cottage cheese, about four hours of freezing time is ideal. (For a half batch, you still need two hours.) After that, it becomes a hard, icy mess — and doesn't usually defrost in an appetizing way.
- You also need to stir it a few times during the freezing process to create peak creaminess.
The verdict: Even as someone who works from home, I found it difficult to time my cottage cheese ice cream consumption properly.
- Either I'd make it and want it ready sooner than the four hours, which is what provides the right consistency to best mimic actual ice cream, or I would have things to do and not be able to eat my protein-rich ice cream imitation at the right moment.
The bottom line: After you get over the initial shock that you can make a somewhat decent-tasting ice cream substitute from cottage cheese, you'll likely grow bored of babysitting it in the freezer — and decide there are easier ways to add protein to your diet.
