Paleo Banana Ice Cream

Want to know the simplest ice cream recipe?  How's one ingredient sound?  

Banana ice cream made in my food processor.  So simple and so good.  No sugar, no milk, just one ingredient, frozen bananas.  I decided to try this recipe out because we bought a bunch of bananas on Saturday at the farmer's market and the nice gal put the bunch of bananas on the top of our reusable shopping bag, which was full of cold meat.  I didn't realize it until more than an hour later and by the time we got home and looked at the bananas, they had gone through a super speedy ripening process.  NEVER bag your bananas with cold stuff.  So I immediately threw them in the freezer to try to salvage them, knowing I had seen this recipe last week.  

Well, I didn't exactly read the recipe last week, just saw that it only took frozen bananas and made them into ice cream.  What I didn't read was the recommendation to peel your bananas and chop into chunks before you freeze them.  Why you ask?  Because if you take them out frozen, you can't peel a frozen banana.  

This is where my hubby comes to the rescue, as he often does!  He really wanted to try this ice cream tonight since I had mentioned it at dinner, so he comes out with a knife and gets to chopping.  He cut the bananas up into chunks and I took another knife and cut the peels off.  He's so good!

I took all the chunks and threw them into my food processor.  This is the third time today I've used it.  I think I'm getting some good use out of this birthday present!  I started to puree the bananas, stopping a few times to scrape it down.  Honestly, for a while there I thought I had screwed something up because nothing was happening.  I kept scraping and kept pureeing.  Scrape and puree.  

Then out of nowhere, BAM!  I had ice cream.  It just took one more scrape and puree to get the bananas down and we had all the ice cream.  It was delicious!  This was an amazingly simple treat. 

Verdict: Aww yeah!  Look at that!  I added some of my homemade granola on top and had myself a little sundae!  I could have added some Dark Chocolate chunks to the mix, cocoa powder, or even strawberries.  There are lots of ideas I could come up with and still keep this Paleo.  Seriously, try this out.

PALEO BANANA ICE CREAM

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

1 ½ -2 bananas

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Peel banana.

2. Slice into 4ish pieces each.

3. Place on a plate and freeze for 1-2 hours.

4. Place chunks into food processor.

5. Puree for a good while, stopping to scrape down the sides periodically.

6. Be amazed as it suddenly turns into ice cream!

7. Here you would add any toppings of choice to blend into the ice cream.

8. Enjoy!

Flourless Fudge Cookies

Today's post isn't Paleo friendly, but it is Gluten free.  Once a month I make the snacks for our Youth Group at church and today was my day.  We now have a student attending who is a Celiac so no wheat can come in the snacks.  I happen to be friends with this girl and her family, so I've been making gluten free food for her for about a year now, but I needed something new and fun for snacks.  I try to out-do myself each month as the youth group year goes along, so I had to start with something simple, like cookies.

I found these cookies when I did an easy search for gluten free desserts on Google, or Pinterest, I don't remember.  The recipe is originally from King Arthur Flour, I do know that much, and I found it over at Life and Kitchen.  These cookies are amazing, they don't taste like plain cookies, they taste like fudge heaven.  The youth said they were really good, and if they liked them, then you know they were good.

I started making these and it took me all of 10 minutes to prepare them, and that included prepping the pans and preheating the oven.  These are the simplest cookies I have ever made.  Turn on your oven and prep your pans first.  Mix the powdered sugar (10x, confectioners sugar, whatever you personally call it -- it's all the same thing), the vanilla, egg whites, salt, and cocoa powder all in a bowl.  Once it's smooth, you scrape down the bowl and mix again to make sure you didn't miss anything.  Add in a cup of chocolate chips and mix gently.

Put the soft dough onto your pans, it will only make about 16 cookies if you use a medium scoop from Pampered Chef (got my PC love in tonight.)  They will spread out so leave room between them.  Bake for 8 minutes then move the pan to a cooling rack and let the cookies cool right on the pan.  The cookies will have a cracked but shiny look to them.

So simple, so tasty.  I had to take the bowl and fill it with water in the sink because it tasted just like fudge and I wanted to lick the bowl after I had put the cookies on the pan.  Then I had to be careful not to eat all the cookies because they were promised to the youth tonight and I'm not supposed to be eating them because they aren't exactly Paleo friendly.  But of course I had to try one before I could send them out the door.  I couldn't send something that tasted bad to the youth, and the stigma of gluten free forced me to try one of these... and feed one to each of the kids.  Thankfully, I made a double batch so there were plenty for the youth tonight.  These came out to be a good size, about 3-4 inches across, if you wanted more from each batch you could just use the smaller scoop and make smaller cookies, but these were perfect to me.

Needless to say, there won't be a Paleo post tonight - more on that tomorrow when I do post about tonight's Sweet Potato and Basil Soup in my broken crock pot.  Fun story to share!  Not exactly tonight's soup, we'll be eating it tomorrow since it won't be done cooking until 10:30 tonight and I'll finish it up for tomorrow night's dinner.  Yeah...  For now, enjoy these cookies.  I wish I had another one to eat but hubby is home and there is no way I could get away with making another batch.

Flourless Fudge Cookies

Ingredients:

2 ¼ cups confectioners’ sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup cocoa powder, Dutch-process preferred

3 large egg whites

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup chocolate chips

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Lightly grease two baking sheets.  Or line with parchment paper, and grease the parchment.

Stir together all ingredients (except chocolate chips) until smooth.  Scrape the bottom of the bowl, and stir again until smooth.  Add the chocolate chips and stir gently until just combined.

Drop the soft, batter-like dough onto the prepared baking sheets in 1 ½” circles; a tablespoon cookie scoop works well, the medium Pampered Chef scoop is what I used.

Bake the cookies for 8 minutes; they will spread, become somewhat shiny, and develop faintly crackly tops.  Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool right on the pan.