Cottage Cheese Ice Cream (Ninja Creami Recipe)
If you’ve not yet embraced cottage cheese, I imagine the title of this recipe may sound a little odd. Cheese ice cream?! Surely even I don’t love cheese that much.
But stick with me! Cottage cheese is super popular at the moment, and for good reason. It tastes very similar to natural yogurt, so don’t let the name put you off – it’s not ‘cheesy’ at all. With the addition of some honey and vanilla extract, it makes an incredible base for a homemade ice cream that’s unbelievably creamy, and pretty healthy too! It ends up tasting like a light and fluffy vanilla ice cream, which is sweetened to perfection – just sweet enough to allow the slightly tangy, yogurt-like flavour of the cottage cheese to peek through.
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I made this cottage cheese ice cream in a Ninja Creami, which I was sent from Very.co.uk. It’s a kitchen appliance which can be used to blitz solid lumps of frozen ingredients to the most wonderful creamy ice cream texture. It’s so much more powerful than a regular blender (I’d never put a huge chunk of ice in a normal blender), and it’s so versatile!
⭐️ What’s so Good about Cottage Cheese?
Over the past few months, cottage cheese has become a weekly staple in my house. It’s mild and creamy, and I love using it to make an easy breakfast, loaded up with fresh fruit, granola, pumpkin or chia seeds, a drizzle of honey, and whatever else I have on hand.
The flavour is similar to Greek yogurt – that sort of creamy, ever so slightly tangy flavour – but cottage cheese has about 40% less fat, and three times as much protein! It’s the kind of swap that’s so easy to make, with big benefits and basically no downsides.
❤️ Why You’ll Love this Ice Cream
I can’t state enough how remarkable this ice cream recipe is. What could be better than a bowl of ice cream which:
- contains only 141 calories per portion, but still boasts over 12 grams of protein!
- tastes incredible, with just enough sweetness to be seriously enjoyable.
- doesn’t contain any ‘weird’ or processed ingredients – just delicious whole foods.
- is easy to make, with the help of the Ninja Creami.
🍦 What can the Ninja Creami do?
I have made a lot of ice cream over the past few weeks when testing this recipe (*sigh* it’s a hard life), and I am hugely impressed with what the Ninja Creami can do. Just freeze your chosen ingredients in the tub, then blitz it up into the most wonderfully smooth soft serve ice cream.
You can use all sorts of ingredients in the Ninja Creami – it’s one of the most versatile appliances I’ve tried. I’ve made fluffy banana ‘nice cream’ using 100% frozen bananas (it’s like magic, I tell you), super indulgent chocolate ice cream, a slushy using frozen juice, and of course, this healthy homemade cottage cheese ice cream. The possibilities are pretty much endless, and I can’t wait to experiment further as the weather gets warmer and warmer.
If you’d like to try the Ninja Creami for yourself, you can buy one from Very.co.uk.
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🥗 Ingredients and Substitutions
Here’s what you’ll need to make this cottage cheese ice cream recipe. See the printable recipe card below for detailed ingredient quantities.
- cottage cheese – full fat works best.
- milk – I used semi-skimmed milk, which is 1.8% fat. Anything similar will be fine, but I’d err on the side of a higher fat content rather than trying to strip things back too far!
- vanilla extract
- honey
Becca’s Top Tip
I made sure the slight yogurt-like tang of the cottage cheese was able to come through in this recipe. However, if you have a particularly sweet tooth, you might want to double up on the honey, to up the sweetness even further.
📹 Recipe Video
🖨️ Printable Instructions
Cottage Cheese Ice Cream
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Print Pin CommentIngredients
- 300 g (~ 1 cup) cottage cheese (preferably full fat)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 Tablespoon honey
- 375 ml (~ 1 1/2 cups) milk (I used semi-skimmed, which is 1.8% fat)
Instructions
- Add all of the ingredients to the Ninja Creami tub, and mix thoroughly to combine.
- Place the tub upright in the freezer for at least 24 hours, until fully frozen.
- Remove the lid from the tub, and insert into the Ninja Creami. Select 'Full', then turn the knob to 'Lite Ice Cream', and blend – it will take 4 minutes. After this first session of blending, the mixture may be a little crumbly.
- To get the smooth and creamy texture we want, select ‘Re-Spin’, which will process the mixture for a further 2 minutes. Repeat this until the ice cream reaches your desired texture – I did three re-spins in total.
- Serve immediately, topped with a drizzle of honey and sprinkles if desired.
Video
Nutrition
Nutritional information is approximate, and will depend on your exact ingredients. Please calculate your own nutritional values if you require accuracy for health reasons.
💭 Recipe FAQs
This recipe will not work without a Ninja Creami – a regular blender would not be strong enough to blend up the solid block of frozen ingredients. If you don’t have a Ninja Creami, you’ll need to use a different ice cream recipe, like my banoffee ice cream.
Yes – if it’s not convenient for you to process the ice cream 24 hours after you’ve frozen the ingredients, just keep the tub in the freezer until you’re ready to blend and serve.
If you have leftover ice cream, just put the tub back into the freezer. It will once again freeze solid, so you’ll need to process the mixture again when you’re ready to eat it.
Thank you for sharing this recipe! Absolutely loved it!
Thanks Alan! Glad you enjoyed it!