Cottage Cheese Ice Cream

We’re back again with another TikTok hack – this time it’s ice cream, more specifically, the extra viral TikTok cottage cheese ice cream. If you love cottage cheese and ice cream, this will be right up your alley.

Who doesn’t love ice cream, especially now that the weather is heating up? Something about a scoop of smooth, creamy, cold ice cream hits the spot every time. But if you don’t want to indulge every day, and maybe want to get more protein into your life, this easy homemade ice cream is here to save the day.

What is cottage cheese ice cream?

Essentially, it’s exactly what it sounds like: ice cream made with cottage cheese. Traditional ice cream uses heavy cream, sugar, and flavoring. Cottage cheese ice cream replaces the cream with cottage cheese. It has a super close consistency to real ice cream and the flavors are spot on. It’s creamy, cold, delicious, and satisfying.

Cottage cheese ice cream ingredients

cottage cheese – you’ll want to use whole fat cottage cheese and it’s best if you use a cottage cheese that you like.

sweetener – honey is the classic sweetener used in cottage cheese ice cream, but you can use your favorite. Some other sweetener ideas: maple syrup, agave syrup, sugar, brown sugar, dates, or if you want to be really really exceptional, sweetened condensed milk.

banana – this is optional, but if you’ve ever had banana “nice cream” you’ll know that a frozen banana adds a lovely texture and makes homemade ice cream easier to scoop.

add ins/flavors – go wild! Extracts can add a huge amount of flavor for almost no calories or you can use in season fruit. Nuts add crunch and

How to make cottage cheese ice cream

1. Place the cottage cheese and sweetener in a blender (or food processor).
2. Blend the mixture until smooth.
3. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and stir in mix ins. (You can skip this step if you’re not going to stir in anything extra).
4. Move the ice cream to a freezer safe container and freeze until firm, up to 4 hours.
5. Enjoy!

Tips and tricks

Use the best cottage cheese you can find

My favorite brand of cottage cheese (not sponsored, I genuinely love them) is Good Culture. For this particular post I tried the double cream classic cottage cheese and it was incredibly creamy and delicious.

Stir occasionally while freezing

If you stir your cottage cheese ice cream every so often while it’s freezing, it will give the ice cream a smoother, less crystallized texture because you’ll be breaking up the mixture and mixing around the frozen and unfrozen parts. It’s a simple way of churning the ice cream without using an ice cream maker.

Stir in the mix ins while partially frozen

If you don’t want all your mix ins to sink or float to the top, the key is to let the cottage cheese ice cream freeze in increments of 30 minutes. Let it freeze, stir in some mix ins, let it freeze, stir it again with more mix ins, then let it freeze for 30 minutes, give it a stir if you can, then let it freeze completely.

Let temper before scooping

Straight from the freezer, cottage cheese ice cream is a little difficult to scoop. Most commercial ice creams have chemical stabilizers that make them easy to scoop straight from the freezer. Since we’re going homemade, we have to let our cottage cheese ice cream temper on the counter for a bit before it reaches a scoop-able texture. Leave your ice cream out on the counter for a couple of minutes before scooping. Or, if you’re a sucker for frustration and pain, use a spoon to dig it straight out of the container from the freezer.

Tools

blender/food processor/immersion blender – Any of these will do, the goal is to get the cottage cheese as smooth, creamy, airy, and light as possible. Make sure you use a silicone spatula to scrape down the sides and stir everything together so you blend up all the curds of cottage cheese.

container – any container with a lid will do. Most people use a loaf pan (because homemade ice cream always seems to be in a loaf pan, but you can use anything, even the container your cottage cheese came in.

Flavors

Go wild! The base of your ice cream isn’t as calorific as regular ice cream so why not heap on a ton of flavor via mix ins!?

Extracts and spices

Liquid extracts add so much flavor. You only need 1/2 a teaspoon to a teaspoon. Try: vanilla, lemon, almond, peppermint, or coconut. You can also use spices a bit of cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, or ginger will add warm spicy notes.

Chocolate and nuts

Chopped chocolate (or chocolate chips) and nuts add textural contrast and deliciousness.

Fruit

Fruit is probably the best pairing for cottage cheese ice cream. You can blend it right into the base with the cottage cheese as well as add chunks of fruit in.

Swirls

You can swirl in anything jammy or liquid-y to add a pretty and flavorful element. Think: jam, nutella, caramel, melted marshmallows, lemon curd, maple syrup, or honey.

Cake, cookies, pie

Chopped up baked goods in ice cream is my absolute favorite. The chunks are the best part, right? Some of my favorites: birthday cake, chocolate cake, brownies, oreos, chocolate chip cookies, pretzels, peach pie, apple pie, gosh I could go on and on but you get the idea.

Chocolate

Blend in 2 tbsp cocoa powder. Stir in 1/2 cup chopped chocolate or chocolate chips. Or, chop up some of your favorite candy bars and stir them in.

Strawberry

Blend in 1/4 cup roughly chopped strawberries with the cottage cheese, then stir in an additional 1/2 cup of sliced or chopped strawberries. For an extra bit of decadence, stir in 2 tbsp strawberry jam at the end.

Banana

Blend in 1 banana and 1/2 tsp vanilla with the cottage cheese. Stir in an additional banana, either sliced or chopped. Optional: stir in 1/4 cup chopped chocolate and 1/4 cup chopped nuts for a take on chunky monkey ice cream.

Who invented cottage cheese ice cream?

TikTok cottage cheese ice cream is viral and like most viral recipes it’s a little difficult to discern who made it first. Sometimes, the person who invented the recipe doesn’t go viral – in this case, from what I can tell, Paige Lingren made cottage cheese ice cream go viral.

But why?!

Because cottage cheese is delicious and so is ice cream! Cottage cheese is low in calories and high in protein. Why not eat it in a new and fun way? It’s super easy to make, very customizable, fun to make, and delicious. It’s wins all the way down.

Why does this work?

The fat content of cottage cheese is lower than that of heavy cream but because they are both dairy products, they mimic each other quite well. Whipping/blending the cottage cheese gives it a creamy, smooth texture that freezes well. Because cottage cheese is mild, it takes on sweetness and other flavors well.

What does cottage cheese ice cream taste like?

It’s a creamy, sweet (this is easily customizable to make it sweeter or less sweet), frozen treat. Does it taste like cottage cheese? If you’re a super taster, sure, you’ll be able to tell it’s cottage cheese. If you add a lot of add ins and sweetener, it’s less noticeable that it’s cottage cheese. Really, it depends on what kind of ice cream connoisseur you are. If you think of it as a high protein, creamy and sweet frozen treat, you’ll love it! It reminds me more if frozen yogurt than traditional ice cream, but I’m not mad about it.

For my version, I used straight up regular sugar, Lucky Charms marshmallows, and sprinkles. They’re not the healthiest, but it’s colorful and fun and it ended up tasting SO GOOD. Dream combination, for sure. I made a mistake by stirring in the marshmallows and sprinkles right away so the sprinkles fell to the bottom and the marshmallows rose to the top, so if you’re doing mix ins, make sure to check out the tips and tricks for how to stop that from happening. It might look like a slight disaster, but she cute and tasty, so it’s all good.

Happy cottage cheese ice cream making! What flavors are you going to be enjoying this summer?
xoxo steph