There is always a tube of Nutella cottage cheese ice cream in my freezer. Not sometimes. Always. Flavors come and go through the summer, but this one never leaves, and I've made it more times than I can count. Thick, dark, glossy, somewhere between gelato and a soft scoop, and the hazelnut hits before the chocolate does.
Ice cream is my weakness, full stop. And in summer I eat it pretty much daily. There are a few flavors I always keep in the freezer, and this is one of them.
Here’s the thing though: I don’t make it with real Nutella. The jar from the store is mostly sugar, 21g in only 2 tablespoons, that’s more than the hazelnuts and more than anything else in it. I’d rather not eat that much sugar every night, and in July I’m eating this ice cream most nights.
The chocolate hazelnut spread in this ice cream recipe is homemade and sugar-free, and it goes into the base, not on top, so the hazelnut runs through every spoonful instead of just the first.
Make it once and you’ve got two things: a pint of ice cream, and a jar of real chocolate hazelnut spread in the fridge. I love hazelnut spread on toast, in a bowl of cottage cheese, and off a spoon standing at the fridge more often than I’d admit.
Half a pint (a serving) comes to 18.2g of protein and 8.5g of net carbs, sugar-free and keto-friendly. The cottage cheese does the quiet protein work in the background, and if you blend it the way I do, you will not taste it. Not once. It’s creamy, and a bowl of it after dinner keeps me satisfied instead of leaving me looking for something else 10 minutes later.
It’s too hot to have the oven on, and this never asks you to. Nothing gets cooked. Nothing gets churned on the stove. You blend it, you freeze it, you spin it.
And I never eat it plain. 2 scoops in a bowl, a drizzle of the spread running down the side, chopped hazelnuts on top. When I want it to feel like more of an occasion, the scoop goes on a warm cottage cheese brownie and starts melting into it. Chocolate against chocolate, warm against cold, on a summer evening.
Make a double batch of the hazelnut spread, and you’ve got a jar in the fridge for 3 weeks. Mine goes on toast, and into a cottage cheese bowl with chopped nuts and a spoon of chia. And off a spoon standing at the fridge more often than I’d admit.
There’s an ingredient in the base I used to use before, but I recently swapped it out, and it had nothing to do with the macros. I made this ice cream the original way for a long time, and then one evening it was ruined, and I couldn’t save it. Not with a re-spin, not with anything.
It only goes wrong on one particular kind of night, and it’s a night most of us have with a pint of ice cream. Once it happens, that pint is gone. One swap and it never happens again. That’s below.
And if you don’t own a Ninja Creami, that isn’t the end of it. You can make this tonight with a loaf pan and a fork. It takes more work, and I won’t pretend the texture is the same, but you’ll still be eating chocolate hazelnut ice cream.
Paid subscribers get the full recipe: the sugar-free chocolate hazelnut spread and the ice cream base in one recipe card, with the amounts and the macros worked out so you can make it tonight. No oven anywhere in it.
Then the part a printable recipe card can’t give you: the swap that saves the pint, the way I get a creamy first spin without standing around waiting for it, why a chocolate hazelnut spread turns bitter and how to stop it, the faster version of the spread for the nights I can’t be bothered grinding nuts, and the loaf-pan way for anyone without a Ninja Creami.
If you’re already a paid subscriber, scroll on and let’s make it. If you’re reading this as a free subscriber and want the full recipe and the notes that come with it, I’d love to have you join my paid community.
Did you know tapping the HEART❤️ at the bottom of this post helps more people find these high protein low carb recipes? It honestly makes my day, so go ahead and give it some love.
Prep: 15 mins | Cook: 0 mins | Total: 24 hrs 15 mins | Serves: 2
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