Easy Keto Vanilla Ice Cream

Ingredients

All Ingredients

• 3 cups heavy whipping cream, divided
• 2 tbsp butter, unsalted
• ⅓ cup lakanto powdered monkfruit sweetener
• ½ tsp xanthan gum
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

Notes

Key Ingredients and Tools

Heavy Whipping Cream (or Heavy Cream)

The cream is the whole base here, and it is worth saying that it is never whipped — this is not a whipped-cream method. The three cups go in as liquid and the fat does the work: it is what stops the mixture freezing into the solid block a low-sugar ice cream otherwise becomes, and it is why this stays scoopable without churning.

The cream is divided in two for a reason. The first half is brought to a low boil with the butter and sweetener, which dissolves the sweetener completely and gives the xanthan gum something warm to disperse into. The second half goes in cold straight afterwards, which brings the whole mixture back down quickly rather than leaving it to sit warm.

Lakanto Powdered Monk Fruit Sweetener

The sweetener here is Lakanto’s powdered monk fruit blend, and the form matters more than the brand.

Powdered is the one to reach for. It goes into the first half of the cream while that is heating and melts in completely, without the granular crunch a coarser sweetener can leave behind — and you would notice that crunch, because nothing after the saucepan gets warm enough to dissolve it.

Xanthan Gum

Half a teaspoon, and it is the difference between ice cream and a block of sweet ice. Without churning there is nothing breaking up the crystals as the mixture freezes, so the gum has to do it: it thickens the base enough that water cannot move around freely and form large crystals. It also stops the fat separating out while the pan sits in the freezer.

It goes in off the heat, whisked a little at a time. Tipped in at once it clumps, and the clumps do not dissolve later.

Vanilla Extract

It goes in after the gum, once the pan is off the heat, because the aromatics in extract are volatile — added to a boiling pan, some of what you paid for leaves as steam. That is the whole reason for the order.

Misc Notes

• If you reach for a sweetener other than Lakanto’s powdered blend, keep it powdered, for the reason in the sweetener note above, and check its package before you measure: not every brand is as sweet as sugar cup for cup.
• Swapping the second half of the cream for unsweetened almond or coconut milk is a change to the recipe as written, and not a small one. Fat is what keeps a no-churn base scoopable rather than icy, so removing half of it is at least as likely to give you a hard, crystalline block as a lighter ice cream.
• The half teaspoon of xanthan gum is doing structural work rather than thickening for its own sake: it holds the mixture together as it freezes and keeps the ice crystals small. The recipe is written with the full half teaspoon. Cutting it back or leaving it out in a no-churn base is at least as likely to give you a coarser, icier scoop as a softer one, so leave it as written.
• If you own an ice cream maker, churning the chilled base before it freezes will give you a finer texture than stirring once does — that is what churning is for. The recipe is written for people who do not own one.
• Mix-ins go in at the stir, not before, so they do not sink while the base chills. Chopped nuts and sugar-free chocolate hold up well; anything wet, berries especially, freezes into hard pieces and waters down the base around them.
• A sugar-free syrup or a spoonful of nut butter over the top works. Add it at the bowl rather than stirring it through, or it freezes into a solid seam.
• Keep leftovers in the freezer in an airtight, freezer-safe container. Food held frozen at 0°F stays safe indefinitely. Quality is a different question, and the recipe gives no number for how long this one stays at its best.