Banana Coconut Ice with Banana Chips {AIP, GAPS, SCD, Paleo}

Do you see that lovely large badge on my side bar, that's making me happy right now? That means you can be sure all my recipes follow Sarah Ballantyne's recommendations for healing autoimmune disease with a Paleo diet. Incidentally, not only are my recipes paleo but they are all AIP/GAPS/SCD compliant too so you don't need to check up on each ingredient.

My ice cream maker has taken up permanent residence on the counter top this Summer and it's getting an awful lot of attention from the children (including the big one I married!). They most definitely all scream for ice cream and we're having a lot of fun thinking up different flavours. This one, however, is pretty much as simple as it gets but as it's my 11 year old daughter's favourite, I thought I'd post it here. It's also one she loves to make herself and I'm all for that. Of course she then becomes extremely territorial and only too pleased to remind her brother of the old childrens' story about the little red hen. Remember that one? Don't worry, with negotiation skills only a mother or the United Nations can possess, everyone gets an equal share in the end. We don't tend to eat too many bananas but they are perfect in ice creams as they make it decadently creamy.

You cannot beat freshly made ice cream and therein lies a fact. So what I do is get the machine working about 10-15 minutes before the main course is served, let the churning work its magic and hey presto, we have delicious, fluffy ice cream all ready in time for pud. Any leftovers go into the freezer for another day. As if!

Another machine I'm loving is my dehydrator. My daughter and I had a little stall at her school Christmas Fair last year, selling organic apple crisps. She learned a little about profit (and loss!), plus selling techniques and tempting customers over to view your wares but most of all we had fun. The only trouble is we were up against a multitude of pre-teen sellers with rows upon rows of sprinkles and food colouring decorated cupcakes, all oversized and glutinous and I'm willing to bet you can imagine who came off best in the sales process. We went to a lot of effort, designing and printing off carefully worded labels, weighing our contents fairly, and though we sold a good number we still came away with more bags than we'd hoped. Not that they were wasted, of course 😉 but we won't be repeating the exercise.

Anyway, I tell you all this because organic bananas are the simplest things to dehydrate as they take seconds to prepare. Sliced and put into the machine before bedtime, they are ready and waiting for me when I wake up next morning, tasting absolutely delicious and I know there are no issues with cross contamination or sneaky additives!

banana coconut ice
If you use frozen bananas and coconut milk from the refrigerator you won't even need to chill the mixture beforehand.
(serves 4-6)

2 ripe bananas
1 cup (250 ml) coconut milk (I use this one)
1/4 cup honey

Put all the ingredients into a high speed blender and blitz till smooth. Chill for at least 2 hours or overnight. Next, put into an ice cream maker and churn, following the instructions in your manual. If you don’t have a machine, then put the mixture into a freeze proof container and freeze till nearly firm. Beat with a whisk until smooth again and return to the freezer. Repeat two or three times. Freezing in this manner results in larger ice crystals and a less creamy texture, but it will still be delicious.

banana chips

Peel and cut how ever many bananas you want to dehydrate into 1/8" to 1/4" slices and place in rows on the trays. Dehydrate at 135F until leathery for 6-10 hours, depending on the humidity in your area. Vancouver has a high humidity level and it took the full 10 hours for mine to dehydrate to how I like them.

If you don't have a dehydrator, you can oven dry them on parchment lined baking trays at the lowest temperature for 1-2 hours, depending on humidity and your preference. You may like to dip the slices into lemon juice first in order to preserve the colour a little better.