The other day, during our evening walk around the city, we saw an ice cream parlour and decided to have a sweet refreshment. It was our first ice cream this year. The offer was diverse, although we didn't even recognise many of the flavours on display. Red velvet was my go-to; my husband ordered the coffee flavour, and my son chose the cookie flavour.
Here are our ice creams in our hands, and we had to take a quick picture because it was one of the hottest days, and the ice cream would start melting very quickly:
To be honest, the ice cream was nothing special... Actually, we got a bit disappointed, especially with the coffee flavour and not to mention that these three portions, which weren't very big, cost $12.60. For that money, in Serbia (at least in our hometown), you can have this amount of ice cream every day for a week! @duskobgd can confirm that.
But it was not the only reason I decided to experiment on my own and make our cold desserts at home. I saw a recipe for frozen "cheesecake", like a high-protein dessert made of cottage cheese that gives a similar feeling of eating ice cream. Healthier, homemade, super easy, and more economical - why wouldn't I try?
Well, I didn't have cottage cheese at home and neither did I find it in the two supermarkets yesterday afternoon that I visited when I wanted to prepare the frozen dessert. Then I used what I already had in my fridge. Cherry, banana, and yoghurt.
The most complicated part of this experiment was removing the pits from the cherries. Everything else was more than easy. I added a little honey too, and mixed everything together.
 |  |
|---|---|
| charries and bananas... | ...mixed with yoghurt and honey |
I poured this rather liquid mass into a wide glass container and it was ready to go to the freezer.
The quantity was not much because this was an experiment just with one banana, some cherries, two small packages of yoghurt, and one tablespoon of honey.
What was the most complicated part of this activity?
...
Waiting at least two hours for it to freeze down. 😂
I checked it after an hour and it still wasn't ready. But around ten o'clock at night, I finally took it out of the freezer and checked how firm it was.
The spoon gave the verdict - we could have this little frozen snack. It had quite a good taste, although it is not the prettiest looking frozen yoghurt. I also have to mention that it was a bit icy under the tongue. You should eat it slowly (not as quickly as I did 😆).
Btw, I shared it with my husband.
I still didn't give up on the recipe I actually saw, the one with the cottage cheese. Today we stopped at another supermarket, so I got the right ingredient for it, although I purchased a different fruit for it. Peach in syrup, instead of cherries or other berries.
As the peach was already in the sweet syrup, I didn't want to add honey.
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|---|---|
| cheese and peach... | ...here already mixed |
Just like I did yesterday with the yoghurt with cherries, today I poured the peach and cheese mixture into a glass bowl (although a little smaller, so the layer was thicker).
Today, I couldn't wait more than two hours for it, I was curious and also I wanted a sweet snack at the moment I took the new experiment out of the freezer.
It was definitely less icy than the cherry/yoghurt combination but the cottage cheese had the dominant flavour. I expected to feel the fruity flavour more, so next time I will add more fruits (more variety and quantity) to one pack of cottage cheese, plus a bit of honey.
I hope my throat survives all these experiments from the freezer - the summer will be long! 😆
Do you like to prepare these homemade desserts (without a real recipe, just like little experiments)?
