Keto Strawberry Ice Cream
My homemade Keto Strawberry Ice Cream with ricotta is fresh, creamy, and full of real strawberry flavor. It tastes like the kind of ice cream you get in a tiny cup with a tiny spoon from an expensive ice cream shop. But it’s incredibly simple to make at home with just 6 ingredients.
Want a protein boost? Try this Strawberry Cottage Cheese Ice Cream next!
What’s a girl to do when she has both ricotta cheese and heavy cream to use up? Make homemade strawberry ice cream, of course. Luckily, I also had half a pound of strawberries that needed to be eaten. Toss everything in the blender, pour it into the ice cream machine, and about twenty minutes later you have a fantastic frozen treat.
Ice cream really is one of the easiest desserts to make. This has about 5 minutes of hands-on time.
The funny thing is that I don’t even like typical store-bought strawberry ice cream. The one and only time I bought Neapolitan ice cream in the last five years, my family ate all the chocolate and vanilla ice cream and left a wall of untouched strawberry in the center.
After that, I decided to just buy vanilla and chocolate and skip the Neapolitan. But this strawberry ice cream? We loved it. I could’ve just eaten it straight from the blender if I wasn’t planning on serving it to company that evening.
Make sure to try my Keto Vanilla Ice Cream and Keto Chocolate Ice Cream next. You could even make your own Neapolitan!
Ingredients
- Strawberries – Fresh ripe strawberries give this ice cream its flavor and pretty pink color.
- Ricotta Cheese – This is my not-so-secret ingredient. Ricotta makes the strawberry ice cream rich and creamy without requiring a traditional cooked custard base.
- Heavy Cream – Adds richness and gives the ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
- Egg Yolks – Help make the ice cream rich and creamy.
- Sweetener – Use your favorite keto-friendly sweetener. I use my own sweetener blend in most of my recipes.
- Glycerin – This is optional, but it helps keep homemade low carb ice cream softer and easier to scoop after freezing.
See recipe card for quantities.
How to Make Keto Strawberry Ice Cream
I love making homemade strawberry ice cream because it’s much easier than most people imagine. The blender does almost all of the work.
Step One: Add all the ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth.
Step Two: Pour the strawberry ice cream base into your ice cream machine and churn according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
You can serve it right from the ice cream maker for a soft-serve consistency. For firmer, scoopable ice cream, transfer it to a freezer-safe container and freeze until it reaches the texture you like.
Top Tip💡
The flavor of your strawberries matters here. Since this is such a simple recipe, sweet, ripe strawberries will give you the best strawberry flavor.
Why Add Ricotta to Ice Cream?
Ricotta might sound like an unusual ice cream ingredient, but it works so well here. It adds creaminess and richness without overpowering the strawberries.
Make sure you blend the mixture really well. You don’t want little bits of ricotta left in the finished ice cream. Once everything is blended until completely smooth, you’d never guess there was ricotta in it.
Can I Make This Without Glycerin?
Yes. I add a little glycerin because homemade keto ice cream tends to freeze much harder than traditional ice cream. The glycerin helps it stay softer and easier to scoop.
You can leave it out. Just plan on letting the ice cream sit at room temperature for a while before scooping if it has been frozen solid.
A Note About the Egg Yolks
This recipe uses uncooked egg yolks. If you prefer not to use raw eggs, use pasteurized eggs or temper the ice cream mixture before chilling and churning it.
Storage
Transfer leftover strawberry ice cream to an airtight freezer-safe container. For the best texture, let it soften at room temperature before scooping if it has frozen very firm.
Homemade ice cream doesn’t have all the stabilizers found in many commercial ice creams, so its texture will naturally be a little different straight from the freezer.
Common Questions
Can I use frozen strawberries?
Yes. Thaw them first and drain off any excess liquid before blending. Fresh, ripe strawberries are my first choice when they’re in season.
Why is my keto ice cream so hard after freezing?
Sugar helps keep traditional ice cream soft, so sugar-free homemade ice cream naturally freezes harder. That’s one reason I use glycerin in this recipe. If you leave it out, simply give the ice cream some time at room temperature before trying to scoop it.
Can I eat it right out of the ice cream maker?
Absolutely. That’s when it has a delicious soft-serve texture. If you want firm scoops, you’ll need to freeze it longer.
Does the ice cream taste like ricotta?
Not really. Once it’s blended with the strawberries, cream, and sweetener, the ricotta mainly contributes to the creamy texture.
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Keto Strawberry Ice Cream
Equipment
Ingredients
- 2 cups ricotta cheese or mascarpone
- 8 oz strawberries stems and hulls removed
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 3 egg yolks ***
- 1/2 cup Joy Filled Eats Sweetener (or see alternatives in recipe notes)
- 1 tsp glycerin
Instructions
- Put all the ingredients in a blender. Blend until smooth.
- Pour into an ice cream machine and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.
Notes
Nutrition
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Originally Published August 6, 2017. Revised and Republished August 18, 2026.
Can you add strawberry flavoring to this recipe to give it more strawberry flavor?
Sure!
Awesome! Thank you. I am always afraid to add my own ingredients because I don’t want to mess up anything.
I made this without strawberries, added vanilla, used egg beaters instead of egg yolks. It tasted okay but the texture was real grainy. I did not use glycerin.
And I used swerve for the sweetener.
Powdered swerve? Do you have a good blender? It should not be grainy when made with powdered sweetener and a good blender.
I love the recipes on your pages, but I was unable to pin recipes from your site!
Please notify me when,this has been corrected.
My team is working on this. If you go into an incognito window you should be able to pin any post now.
Your recipe does not tell you the correct steps. You throw raw eggs in the blender than in the ice cream machine?????
Absolutely. The steps are correct. Raw eggs make the ice cream creamier. If you are concerned about using raw egg yolks you can purchase pasteurized eggs or you can temper the ice cream base.
This was terrific! Needed to use up some ricotta. Didn’t have berries but added natural peanut butter. Yum!!
I made this ice cream and it was very good. But it did not freeze in my freezer. I have a Cuisinart 21 freezer and I followed the recipe and it didn’t freeze. I poured it over somemore strawberries and then froze the rest. I just ate some and it stillman was good out of the freezer. Would you have any idea why it didn’t freeze.
Are you sure your ice cream maker bowl was frozen solid?
My husband can only have cultured dairy, so the ricotta is fine, but the heavy cream is problematic. Could coconut cream be substituted for the heavy cream? Of so, should any changes be made?
I think you should be able to sub in the coconut cream without altering the recipe. Please let me know how it turns out!
Can it be made without the glycerin?
Yes, but you will most likely need to let the ice cream sit out at room temperature for about 30 minutes to become scoopable.
I checked out how to temper the eggs but with this recipe would you boil just the heavy cream then temper the eggs into the cream then add it to the rest of the ingredients?
Yes, heat the cream to just below boiling. Then slowly pour it over the eggs while whisking. Strain just in case some of the eggs were scrambled. Chill and proceed! I hope you enjoy it 🙂
This is soooooo good! I always splurge on a good quality Ricotta cheese and my husband would have a cow if he knew it was in there! He always says I never see you cook with the Ricotta cheese, what do you use it for? He doesn’t really like ricotta! But he loves this strawberry ice cream! So do I! 😀
Do you think this could be made without an ice cream maker? Just mix it and pop it in a container in the freezer?
I think it would freeze too solid that way. But I know it makes great ice pops.
I didn’t see how many servings this recipe is for. Or how much is a serving?
This makes 8 servings.