Omega-3 Chocolate Ice Cream

I'm obsessed with ice cream. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's my comfort food at the end of the day after dealing with spending time with 9 kids, and it's certainly something I do look forward to after bedtime. However, I must learn from the past...

After I gave birth to the twins a little over two years ago, I lost all of the 43 pounds I had gained in about a month. I was flying high, and KNEW that since I was exclusively breastfeeding twins, I could eat WHATEVER I wanted. Little did I know then that using ice cream as a comfort food at the end of each grueling day with twin newborns would cause me to start packing on the pounds again, finally putting me close to the 200-pound mark. It took me a while to realize my mistake, but when I did, it was around the same time I became a vegan, and I was able to drop the weight I had gained.

Fast-forward two years. Now I have a very demanding newborn, 2-year-old twins, a 3-year-old, a boy who's about to graduate and leave home, and four kids in-between. Do ya think I need comfort food? Yeah!

But.....I wasn't going to let myself make the same mistake again. I need comfort food, desperately, but this time if I'm going to eat ice cream, it's going to be good for me.

I've come across avocado ice cream recipes many times in my searches on the internet, and they never did sound very appetizing to me. But I know how healthy avocados are, especially with their illusive omega-3 content, so I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out how to incorporate more into family meals. In fact, here's what "Living and Raw Foods" has to say about avocados...

"Avocados are bursting with nutrients--vitamins, A, B-complex, C, E, H, K, and folic acid, plus the minerals magnesium, copper, iron, calcium, potassium and many other trace elements. Avocados provide all of the essential amino acids (those that must be provided by our diet), with 18 amino acids in all, plus 7 fatty acids, including Omega 3 and 6. Avocados contain more protein than cow’s milk, about 2% per edible portion.."

Recently I found an avocado/orange/chocolate pudding recipe in a cook book, tried it, and loved it. This got me to thinking that if avocado is that good in pudding, it would be even better in ice cream, because of the it's creamy texture and healthy fat content. I.Was. Right. (And if you don't believe me, ask my husband. He knows I'm always right.)

When I first tasted this recipe right out of the ice cream machine, I could taste a hint of the avocado, but because I have had valuable experience with avocados in chocolate creamy desserts, I knew that if I let it sit overnight, the avocado flavor would dissipate. I was right again. When I got it out as a snack for the kids this morning, I could taste no trace of avocado, just creamy chocolate goodness...

(Oh, one last thing about the recipe. It calls for namashoyu or soy sauce. Weird, I know, but somehow soy sauce brings out the flavor of the chocolate. If you don't want to use soy sauce, just add in a quarter teaspoon of salt.)

And not only does this ice cream taste delicious, it can be used as a plumping lip liner...

Twin B couldn't be outdone, and insisted that I take his picture, too, but he looks more like a clown...

Hope you love it, too!