Vanilla and Hazelnut Nice Cream

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Hello,

It is really hot outside, isn't it? How about a big bowl of yummy Vanilla and Hazelnut Nice Cream?

You may have already heard about it, if not, you really should! Nice Cream (or N'ice Cream) is a healthy and delicious ice cream alternative which doesn't contain any refined sugar or dairy. When you blend frozen bananas, its main ingredient, together with a flavor or fruit you'd like, in a matter of seconds you make very healthy and flavorsome ice creams.

I wanted to make something basic so we've made vanilla and hazelnut-cacao flavoured nice creams today.

Once you learn tips and tricks about how to make nice cream, you will see how easy it is to create your own beautifully flavored nice creams.

Tips to make delicious Nice Creams :

1-  Our main ingredient should be frozen RIPE bananas. There are mainly two reasons for that:
     a) Bananas are the ones that make our nice cream really creamy.
     b) We don't add any sweetener, so the riper the bananas the sweeter the nice cream.

2- We can flavour our nice creams by adding some spices or powders like vanilla, cacao, cinnamon...etc.

3- If we'd like to have fruit nice creams, we can add the real thing itself. We can blend frozen ripe bananas with previously cut and frozen fruits like strawberries, blueberries, peaches, apricots, melon...etc.

4- The consistency in fruit flavoured Nice Creams may change due the type of the fruit and quantity that we use. If our nice cream is high in bananas it will be creamier. The more and the juicer fruit you use it will tend to have icier consistency.

5- You can flavour your Nice Cream with nut butters like hazelnut or peanut butter or any butter you'd like.

6- While preparing our Nice Cream time is of the essence. We need to be fast attentive so that it won't melt. We like its creamy consistency right after we blend it and we have it fresh as soon as it's done. If you'd like to eat it later or if you think it became too soft, you can put it back in the freezer to eat it later.

7- If you'd like you can serve your Nice Creams with fresh fruit cuts, raw cacao, chocolate pieces or pistachio, walnut crumbs... etc.

NOTE: Make sure your blender is compatible to process ice and frozen pieces of fruit!!

Here comes the recipe of today.

Ingredients (for 2):
400 g frozen RIPE banana slices
30 g Almond Milk (or another plant based milk)
1/4 tsp vanilla powder (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
1 TBSP Hazelnut Butter
1 TBSP raw cacao powder (or unsweetened dark cacao powder)

Preparation:

Yogurt Ice Cream with Fresh Strawberries and Blueberries

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Hello friends,

Today we are preparing a flavorful ice cream with soy yogurt, fresh fruits, pistachios and coconut flakes.

Before going plant based, I used to make my own yogurt at home. I wanted to make also a plant based yogurt myself and tried different recipes with nuts, rice, soybeans or plant based milks. However I wasn't happy with neither taste nor the consistency. 

Among the plant based yogurt brands we've tried so far our absolute favourite is Sojade natural soy yogurt. It is delicious, tastes really yogurt-like and is also organic. Another brand we use is Sojasun natural soy yogurt. I read both Sojade and Sojasun make part of the same group, while the first one is organic the other one is not.

I live in Italy and I can find them quite easily. I don't know from which part of the world you are reading this blog, you may have different brands.

If you live in a place where soy yogurt is out of reach for you or if you can't find one that you like, it is not a big deal for this recipe, you can replace yogurt with the same amount of frozen banana.

We won't add any sweetener at all to our healthy ice cream. The most important tip I can share with you is to have some frozen RIPE bananas in your freezer. As long as you have ripe bananas you won't need use any other sweetener or thickener. No need to count calories as well ;)

I follow discounts and when bananas are discounted I buy in bulk, let them ripen and then slice and freeze them. Sometimes, mostly in summer, supermarkets want to get rid of their overripe bananas fast so they sell them at a pretty discounted price at their discount corners, so keep in mind.

Ingredients (for 2):
300 g frozen RIPE banana slices
100 g frozen soy yogurt cubes
1/4 tsp vanilla extract or pure vanilla powder
Fresh strawberry slices
Blueberries
Raw pistachios
Coconut flakes

Preparation:

2-Ingredient Chocolate Pudding

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Today we will make a yummy and healthy dessert only with 2 ingredients. But before anything, I need to mention my dear friend Andrea here, who introduced me to this lovely recipe. "Grazie Andrea!"

I live in Monte San Vito, a small town in Italy and it looks like a persimmon paradise these days. You can see many persimmon trees in the gardens, by the roads. In this time of the year the trees don't have any leaves but they are full of orange colored persimmon fruits.

Our friends brought us a lot of persimmons from their garden so I decided to use them to make this pudding and I wanted to share the recipe with you guys while the persimmons are still in season.

All we need for this pudding is some very RIPE persimmons and unsweetened cacao powder. As you can understand from the capital letters it is extremely important to use ripe persimmons in order to obtain the sweetness and the consistency we want in our pudding. Because there is a huge difference between ripe and unripe persimmon fruits in regard to taste and the texture!

As ripe persimmons have darker color, gel-like consistency and are very sweet, unripe fruits are, instead, harder and astringent because of their high tannin content. As they mature the tannin gradually disappears and the fruit gets sweeter and more aromatic.

You can see the color difference in my ripe persimmons on the left and my unripe persimmons on the right. 

If your persimmons are not ripe enough you can let them ripen at home. When they are ready the flesh will become completely soft, almost gel-like.

You can use following method to speed up the ripening process: Put your persimmons on a plate with their stem side down. Place 2 - 3 apples among persimmons. Put the plate in a bag and place it in a dark place at room temperature, for example inside a cupboard, until the fruits are ripe enough.

You can distinctly see the difference between ripe and unripe fruits in the following photo.

My friend Andrea told me to use 1 tsp of cacao powder per persimmon.
I prepared this pudding with 7 persimmons and let me write exact amount of the ingredients below.

Ingredients:
7 very RIPE persimmons ==> 1.150 g
7 tsp organic no sugar added cacao powder ==> 50 g

Preparation:

Chocolate Chia Pudding

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Today I would like to share with you guys one of our favourite recipes: Chocolate Chia Pudding.

With this recipe you can prepare a very delicious, nutritious and healthy dessert. I prepared it for 4 person which gives a generous size. It is a good source of dietary fiber and manganese. It also contains 8 g of protein per serving.

Chocolate Chia Pudding could be also a great choice to prepare mini desserts for your house parties if served in smaller sized cups like shot glasses.

Ingredients:

Pudding:
400 g unsweetened organic soy milk
70 g chia seeds
120 g pitted dates
30 g unsweetened cacao powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp salt
1 vanilla pod (scraped pulp and seeds only) or 1 tsp vanilla extract

Top:
2 bananas
1 - 2 Tbsp dark chocolate (minimum 70% cacao), chopped into small pieces


Preparation: