Friday, April 27, 2012

Paleo "ice cream" (coconut milk and frozen fruit)

I hope we have firmly established that very few, if any, of my "recipes" are really recipes at all. They are so stupidly simple that they better qualify as just
"good ideas." Fortunately, deliciousness is not compromised significantly in the process of simplification. In fact, if anything, it is enhanced because the food ends up in my gaping maw faster this way.

(Although I should digress for a moment and say that if someone who actually knew what he or she was doing with food -- other than shoving it in -- did just a few modifications/additions to this one, said chef-like person could have a desserty concoction that could rival the duck-egg creme brûlée at The Pickled Heron. Get on that, please).

This time, I may be pushing the envelope from "simple" to "just plain dumb."

But, holy jebus, it's delicious.

See, I don't have a sweet tooth that controls my life. I like barely-sweet-at-all dark chocolate much better than milk chocolate. I don't really crave desserts, the aforementioned creme brûlée being the exception. And I don't find paleo/primal eating to be a drag or a challenge because I am sugar-deprived. But I know many of you are in hardcore sugar/sweets withdrawal at the moment.

And,yeah, ice cream *is* delicious.

But ice cream is not paleo. Ice cream is not even primal. Ice cream is, frankly, a pretty effed-up thing to eat with any regularity. But coconut milk is good for you. It has lauric acid in it -- an amino acid you can otherwise only get from breast milk -- and, every time I check, my local Whole Foods is out of breast milk. (In fact, did you know they have security guards at Whole Foods that handle certain questions from customers?) So eat this instead, and feel all righteous about it while you're doing it. I swear that this may be the paleo "recipe" that most makes you think, "You have got to be effing kidding me.... How can this possibly be good for me *and* so damn delicious?"

Do this:

Buy a bag of frozen fruit that has no added sugar. In fact, it should have no added *anything*. Wegmans has a store brand called "Just Picked" that has one ingredient: fruit. It looks like this:



Put some of the fruit, still frozen, in a bowl. Pour coconut milk over it. (Canned coconut milk. Full-fat canned coconut milk. Not some low-fat slop. And not the crap in the crappy carton that has crappy ingredients.... Did you know that even a new thesaurus will spontaneously explode if you don't use it?). The coconut milk instantly freezes into a mushy concoction that, when mixed with the fruit even a little, resembles super-fatty beautiful ice cream in more than just a small way. Except it is good for you. I just had it with cherries:



And if you want to get wild sometimes and throw in some chunks of super-high (like 86%) cacao dark chocolate, as long as you are not trying to comply with the rules of a paleo challenge you will be even happier.

Oh, and one small caveat: stick with small fruits, like cherries, blackberries, blueberries, etc. if you try this stunt with frozen peaches, your dentist will be the first person you call.

Enjoy.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

12 comments:

  1. Tried this tonight w/blueberries and it was delish! It definitely simulated ice cream without the nasty side effects. Thank you for posting this. I'm on a paleo challenge so no cacao for me but I think next time I might try strawberries & chopped almonds.

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  2. this looks great! going to try it

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  3. oh yum! and i don't have to spend hours cooking the stuff and then waiting for it to freeze. Brilliant!

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  4. This is nice! I've been craving for sugar, especially ice cream for days. This indeed is a creative, smart, delicious yet healthy way of doing it! Thanks~

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  5. This is awesome!! Thank you for posting, and your humor!

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  6. Do you realize how close I was to going to the store and buying some coconut milk ice cream that I was going to deeply regret eating later?? I love you, internet stranger!

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  7. haha! This is great! I used raspberries...... thanks for the GREAT IDEA!

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  8. Is there any way to make this work with frozen peaches or pears??

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  9. Not really. They are too big. A little too, er, crunchy.

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  10. I just had the idea of putting some frozen fruit into some coconut cream, and was delighted to find that as the fruit thawed slightly, the coconut cream froze a little. Gorgeous. Then I googled it and found you :-) I used pineapple chunks - and then chucked a few raspberries in for a bit of tartness...startlingly delicious :-)

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  11. try ripe bananas fry them first then freeze them and whip the frozen bananas with coconut milk. Drop some pecan nuts and its ice cream heaven for those of us who can't eat or have given up diary.

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  12. You sir, are a genius!!!!

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