Purple Passion

I have had a bag of frozen mixed berries from Sam's for quite some time now. Guess I was uninspired. Then, the other day, I made a yummy fruit smoothie with them. That got me thinking about trying another dessert. On a family trip to Silver Dollar City a few years ago, I tasted a fabulous blackberry ice cream. I wondered if I could duplicate that flavor with one of my low carb staples--cream cheese, and one of my new experimental ingredients--chia seeds. So, off I went. I gotta say, the husband is happy. We had been feeling ice cream deprived after that birthday party.

Now this list of ingredients is a little odd for an ice cream dessert. I don't know what to call it. It is not a sherbet, not a granita, not a sorbet. Any one of those would sound better, but what I came up with defies description. So here goes.

Purple Passion

3 teaspoons of whole chia seeds
1/8 cup DaVinci Raspberry sugar free syrup
1 cup frozen berry mix (mine has blueberries, blackberries and raspberries)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons of cream cheese
sweetener to taste (I used about 4 drops of liquid sucralose, the equivalent of 3-4 teaspoons of sugar)

First, mix the chia seeds with the syrup, cream and water. Let stand about 10 minutes. Put this mixture into a blender. Add the frozen berries, cream cheese and sweetener. Blend until smooth. Pour this mixture into a bowl and place it in the freezer. Stir every 15 minutes until it is set up. If it freezes too hard before you plan to eat it, let it thaw a bit on the counter and stir again.
Serves 2


I couldn't tell the chia seeds from the blackberry seeds, but it was delicious no matter what. The chia seeds give the mixture a gelled consistency which may have kept it from forming huge ice crystals. That might have been helped by the creaminess of the cream cheese too. I am certainly no kitchen chemist. Since the berries were already frozen, this didn't take long at all to set up. I don't have the patience to drag out the ice cream maker, though I suspect it would work well there, if the recipes was doubled or tripled. There was no need to use it for this treat, a couple of stirs as it was freezing, and we were set to go. Good and good for you.