Can't find your favourite flavour at the store? Turn your house into a gourmet ice cream parlour!

Maybe you live in a rural town, like I do, and cannot get your favourite ice cream flavour at the local grocer.  Or maybe you just want to eat more natural iced treats than what is available.  Or perhaps you just want more gourmet flavour. Whatever the reason, it may be time to layer up your ice cream with new and tasty ingredients.

Here are three ways to add a little more flavour to your Plain Jane ice cream:


Natural Peanut Butter & Chocolate:

Tired of waiting for your grocery store to stock some Haagen Dazs Peanut Butter?  Buy some natural chocolate ice cream (where the ingredients list starts with 'cream' instead of 'modified milk ingredients') and layer up an ice cream cone with three scoops and three layers of peanut butter (about a teaspoon for each layer). It's filling, so you won't go back for seconds!

Hazelnutella Dream: Top your chocolate ice cream with roasted hazelnuts and chocolate shavings, and swirls of Nutella squeezed out of the cut corner of a Ziplock snack bag.

Vanilla Cocoa Bean Crumble: Using a blender or single-blade coffee grinder, grind up some raw, organic cocoa nibs with raw cane sugar or coconut sugar until you have small, crunchy pieces and sprinkle them on your ice cream (or roll balls of ice cream in the cocoa bean). To make it extra special, lightly drizzle on some hazelnut oil and rest it in a cold shot of organic espresso.

Vanilla Ice Cream resting in a pool of cold espresso and
sprinkled with ground cocoa nibs and coconut sugar, and drizzled with pure hazelnut oil.

I purchased this Hazelnut Oil from Signature Fine Foods in Concord, ON
- delivered to my door on Manitoulin Island.