The Winner of the "Play With MY Food" Cooking Contest: Protein Category

I'll spare you the story of why this wasn't posted yesterday and cut to the chase.

Here's an in-process photo of the protein judge, Julia, making the winning recipe for this category. Remember, the winner of each category (Taco Casserole, Eggchilada and Protein) will receive a $50 Amazon gift card! Congratulations goes to:

Joy M.'s Chocolate Coffee Caramel Brownie Protein Ice Cream!

(Joy, please email me at bariatricfoodie@yahoo.com to claim your prize!)

Julia's soft serve ice cream

Here's what Julia had to say about why she picked this recipe:

Even though I'm not a huge sweets fan since surgery, when I saw this flavor combination I was intrigued. What ultimately won me over is that this recipe just screamed summer and ice cream! I did make a few modifications to the recipe (noted below) but overall I loved the ice cream best straight out of the ice cream maker. Protein ice cream freezes hard, Foodies! But just out of the maker it was creamy goodness.

Congrats to Joy but really to ALL the entrants in this contest! When I agreed to judge the protein category I thought I had the easiest job. Not so! I'm in awe of the creativity that abounds when we play with Nik's Food!

Julia's Recipe Modifications:

• 8 ounces 1% milk (I'm not a soy fan, and wasn't sure how almond milk would work)
• 1 packet Click Mocha (didn’t have chocolate protein powder on hand, and figured I’d cover the chocolate + the espresso power in one thing)
• 1 heaping Tablespoon unsweetened black cocoa powder (note to the Foodie Nation, this stuff is the SHIZZ. I get it from the King Arthur Flour online store and it is excellent for baking...)
• 6 pumps Torani sugar free salted caramel syrup
• 2 packets of Splenda
• 2 Vitalicious Fudgy Chocolate VitaCakes (what I had, figured two of the smaller 50 calorie ones were roughly equivalent to the VitaTops Joy used), chopped into bite-sized pieces

And here's the original and the recipe and again!

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces milk (cow or soy – I used Soy Slender Chocolate flavor)
• 1 scoop chocolate protein powder (I used Syntrax Chocolate Truffle)
• 1 heaping Tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 Tablespoon instant espresso powder
• 6 pumps Torani sugar free salted caramel syrup
• 2 packets of Splenda
• 1 Vitalicious sugar free velvety chocolate vitatop, chopped into bite-sized pieces

Directions:

1. Pour first 6 ingredients into your blender and blend on high until doubled in size and very frothy. 
2. Add liquid into your ice cream maker and blend in the maker until it is the soft serve consistency you are seeking.  
3. Pour out into a bowl and add the chopped up vitatop.  Gently mix until combined.  
4. If you want it like hard ice cream, put it into the freezer at this stage until is frozen solid.

Note: If you are a new post-op (or a post-op who wants to cut the calories or who is triggered by such items) and cannot have add-ins like sugar-free vitatops, feel free to omit them, the ice cream will still be delicious!

FOODIES: Stay tuned for the rest of the winners throughout the day (for real this time!) and later this week I'll put up all the recipes! I ask for your patience in that as I'm working on presenting the recipes so you can all easily download them, print them or view from your tablet or mobile device (having a document do all of these things simultaneously is NOT easy!) Until then, keep playing with your food!