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Healthy Home Economist / Archives / Recipes / Dessert Recipes / Ice Cream Recipes / Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream

Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream

by Sarah Pope / Affiliate Links ✔

Jump to Recipe

Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
  • Preparation Tips+−
    • Suggested Sweeteners
    • Cocoa, Cacao or Carob?
  • Raw Chocolate Ice Cream Recipe+−
    • Ingredients
    • Instructions
    • Recipe Video
    • Recipe Notes

This recipe for raw chocolate ice cream is much healthier than even the best gourmet brands at the store. Legal for gut healing diets too!

scoop of homemade raw chocolate ice cream

Raw chocolate ice cream is an occasional treat in our home for special occasions or holidays.

When I take the time to make a quart, I make sure that it is as wholesome and nutritious as possible.

The best way to do this is to use unpasteurized grassfed cream from a local farm.

If you do not have this gourmet product available, you can separate cream from raw milk instead. It is simple to do using a turkey baster!

In a pinch, you can use pasteurized cream (this brand is acceptable), but the beneficial enzyme and probiotic rawness of this recipe will be reduced to the egg yolk portion only.

It is advisable to avoid using ultrapasteurized (UHT) cream. This product is processed at such high temperatures that it is completely denatured. This is the type of cream favored by commercial brands.

No wonder you can’t stop eating commercial ice cream…it isn’t filling when made with ultraprocessed cream. The satiation mechanism in the brain is slow to respond to denatured food.

Besides the overeating problem, eating ultraprocessed foods like UHT cream triggers incomplete digestion. This creates the perfect breeding ground for pathogens in the gut to thrive.

Preparation Tips

The best brand of chocolate ice cream that I’ve seen that is widely available is Haagen Dazs. The only ingredients are cream, skim milk, cane sugar, egg yolks, and cocoa powder.

You can really dial up the “healthy” on chocolate ice cream if you make it yourself, however!

Bonus: You will find that homemade chocolate ice cream is much more filling and you eat much less!

Using grassfed cream alone with no backside bulging skim milk is the first big substitution.

Using a whole sweetener instead of refined cane sugar is another big improvement.

Finally, using raw egg yolks versus the pasteurized eggs from the factory completes the transformation.

Note that this recipe uses all cream with no milk. This is necessary to comply with the full GAPS diet.

If you are not on GAPS and would like the ice cream to be a bit less rich, feel free to substitute up to half of the cream with full-fat raw milk.

Suggested Sweeteners

I developed this recipe for my husband who is on the regular (least restrictive) GAPS diet (after several years on GAPS Intro).

He absolutely LOVES IT.

The only sweeteners allowed on this protocol are honey and fruit due to their simple molecular structure which is easy to digest.

Thus, date syrup would be the best sweetener for this recipe for anyone who has compromised digestion. You could use raw honey, but it does not mix as well.

If you are not on GAPS, I would suggest maple syrup as another excellent option.

No exaggeration … this ice cream tastes better than Haagen Dasz chocolate ice cream when fruit-sweetened just with the date syrup. It is so much healthier too!

I encourage you to try the recipe below as is with no substitutions the first time and see what you think.

Cocoa, Cacao or Carob?

I recommend cocoa powder over cacao for this recipe.

The reason is that cocoa powder is fermented and then roasted and therefore lower in antinutrients such as phytic acid.

I don’t mean to suggest that cocoa powder is low in phytic acid. However, roasted cocoa powder is certainly lower in this potent antinutrient than raw cacao.

As such, this treat is reserved for the “on occasion” menu plan!

If you are sensitive to cocoa, feel free to use carob powder instead.

Note that carob is more bitter than cocoa, so you might need to increase the sweetener a bit to compensate.

Roasted cocoa powder (not cacao) is permitted on the full GAPS diet (not Intro) once symptoms have resolved.

scoop of homemade raw chocolate ice cream
5 from 11 votes
Print

Raw Chocolate Ice Cream Recipe

How to make homemade RAW chocolate ice cream using only wholesome ingredients that is far healthier than even the organic or premium brands at the store.

Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Keyword easy, fruit sweetened, gaps, healthy, raw, scd, sugar free, whole food
Prep Time 10 minutes
Churn Time 25 minutes
Total Time 35 minutes
Servings 8
Calories 220 kcal
Author Sarah Pope

Ingredients

  • 3 egg yolks preferably pastured
  • 3 cups raw cream
  • 1/3 cup cocoa powder *not cacao
  • 1/2 cup date syrup
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

  1. Wash eggs in warm soapy water and pat dry with a clean towel.

  2. Crack and separate eggs into whites and yolks.

  3. Beat egg yolks briefly in a large, glass bowl. Tip: Refrigerate the separated egg whites in a small glass container with a lid to make healthy protein cookies later.

  4. Mix in the syrup with the yolks and then beat in the cocoa powder until just smooth.

  5. Blend the cream gently with the yolk mixture and then stir in the vanilla. Pour the blended ingredients into your ice cream maker. Follow your model's directions for how long the ice cream is churned.

  6. When the ice cream is frozen and ready (about 25 minutes for my ice cream machine), pour into a shallow, glass baking dish (for easier scoopability).

  7. Serve immediately if soft serve style ice cream is preferred. For harder ice cream, cover the dish with a lid and keep in the freezer for at least 4 hours to fully set.

  8. While the vanilla extract helps maintain good scoopability right out of the freezer, leaving the ice cream container on the counter for a few minutes before serving makes the process even easier.

Recipe Video

Recipe Notes

If using carob instead of cocoa, substitute the vanilla extract with chocolate extract.

Nutrition Facts
Raw Chocolate Ice Cream Recipe
Amount Per Serving (0.5 cup)
Calories 220 Calories from Fat 126
% Daily Value*
Fat 14g22%
Saturated Fat 10g50%
Polyunsaturated Fat 0.5g
Monounsaturated Fat 3.5g
Cholesterol 67mg22%
Sodium 40mg2%
Potassium 130mg4%
Carbohydrates 18g6%
Protein 4g8%
Vitamin A 1300IU26%
Calcium 107mg11%
Iron 1mg6%
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
healthy raw chocolate ice cream scoop
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Category: GAPS Recipes, Ice Cream Recipes
Sarah Pope

Sarah Pope MGA has been a Health and Nutrition Educator since 2002. She is a summa cum laude graduate in Economics from Furman University and holds a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

She is the author of three books: Amazon #1 bestseller Get Your Fats Straight, Traditional Remedies for Modern Families, and Living Green in an Artificial World.

Her four eBooks Good Diet…Bad Diet, Real Food Fermentation, Ketonomics, and Ancestrally Inspired Dairy-Free Recipes are available for complimentary download via Healthy Home Plus.

Her mission is dedicated to helping families effectively incorporate the principles of ancestral diets within the modern household. She is a sought after lecturer around the world for conferences, summits, and podcasts.

Sarah was awarded Activist of the Year in 2010 at the International Wise Traditions Conference, subsequently serving on the Board of Directors of the nutrition nonprofit the Weston A. Price Foundation for seven years.

Her work has been covered by numerous independent and major media including USA Today, ABC, and NBC among many others.

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Reader Interactions

Comments (23)

  1. Maritza

    Apr 28, 2025 at 3:18 pm

    5 stars
    I want to buy that heirloom cacao since all I have been using is the alkalized per your recommendation but I wanted to know if you have any thoughts on heavy metals in cocoa powder? I have read African cocoa has lower levels of heavy metals vs Peruvian and the one heirloom one is Peruvian. But I would love to know your thoughts.

    Reply
    • Sarah Pope

      Apr 29, 2025 at 9:35 am

      There’s definitely an issue with heavy metals in chocolate…whether the source is the cacao/cocoa or the processing at the chocolate factories is up for debate.

      They are finding heavy metals in many foods and it isn’t the food itself that is the issue, so I would guess the same for cacao/cocoa powder. If you get the whole food alone and make the “chocolate” treat yourself (in this case chocolate ice cream), my opinion is that the risk of heavy metals is low. Even still, this is a treat that should be made and enjoyed only on occasion!!

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