Cherry Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream (dairy-free, paleo)

It's summer! Time to break out the ice cream maker and whip up some dairy-free ice cream. Plus it's cherry season right now. This coconut milk-based ice cream is a perfect way to indulge in both antioxidant-rich cherries and dark chocolate. Serve it as a sweet treat after dinner, or a healthy mid-afternoon snack for your kids. This cherry chocolate chunk ice cream comes from my Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook.

Be sure to use full fat coconut milk in this recipe. The hemp seeds give it some extra creaminess, healthy fats, and amino acids. You can easily omit the chocolate if you are on Phase 2 of the Elimination Diet. You can also replace the cherries with blueberries, strawberries, or diced mango. All variations are delicious!

Apricot-Cherry Upside Down Cake (gluten-free, grain-free, nut-free)

Summer's bounty is here and needs to be preserved or used right away! What do you do to preserve the summer harvest of fruits and vegetables? For fruit, we freeze it, dehydrate it into fruit roll-ups or small pieces, make jam, make fun cakes or crisps, and just enjoy it fresh.

This cake recipe evolved after creating a grain-free apple cobbler (with those yummy early season baking apples). I thought if my ingredient combinations worked as a topping for cobbler, they might work (with a few tweaks) as a base for an upside down cake! I'll share the cobbler recipe later in the season when more varieties of apples are available.

If you are looking for more healthy gluten-free dessert recipes like this one, then check out my new book, Nourishing Meals. I think the dessert chapter has about 50 new recipes ranging from Sweet Potato Custard and Dark Chocolate Coconut Custard to Frozen Banana Coconut Cream Pie and Lime Avocado Tart with a Macadamia Nut Crust to Cashew Ginger Cookies, Carrot Orange Spice Cupcakes, and Gingerbread! All of these recipes I just listed are also free of grain flours and sweetened with a minimal amount of natural sweeteners. Some of them are vegan and some contain eggs. My new book is due out at the end of this month and can be found on our website (with a free e-book) or on amazon.com.

Low Sugar Green Smoothie

Okay, this smoothie doesn't look too green now does it? Berries and greens blended up equal brown. Although the color may not look too appetizing, the flavor is amazing! Our 4-year old twin boys drink it with a straw. They now race to see who is done first. We hear "done" and then "done" and then "no, I was done first" and then "I'm not playing first game." Just so you all know, drinking your smoothie as fast as you can is not optimal for digestion. It is best to let each sip sit in your mouth for at least 30 seconds to allow for enzymes such as amylase to begin to break down the fruit sugars.

We've been asked many times to offer green smoothie recipes that don't contain too much fruit sugar. Normally we use two tart apples and two pears in each smoothie, but by using berries and citrus instead you can lower the glycemic index and keep the overall FODMAP content much lower. FODMAPs are short-chain carbohydrates found in fruits such as apples and pears (and many other foods) that can contribute to gas, bloating, and other GI issues for those who are sensitive, or who have imbalanced gut microflora.

The combination of the berries, cherries, and greens create a superfood smoothie! No need to buy expensive, exotic fruits such as the acai berry! Did you know that blueberry consumption can lead to an increase in beneficial bifidobacterium in the gut? They are also effective at eradicating harmful, pathogenic bacteria in the gut. Another reason to make blueberries a regular part of your diet!

Use a glass or stainless steel straw for children. Straws seem to make green smoothies much more fun to drink!

Gluten-Free, Casein-Free Muffin Recipe and a GIVEAWAY!

I have something fun planned for today. First, a wonderful gluten-free, casein-free, refined sugar-free muffin recipe to share that is full of healthy ingredients. No starches, no xanthan gum, just a few whole food ingredients. The recipe isn't mine though, it comes from another lovely food blogger, Kelly of The Spunky Coconut! And second, I'm giving away a free copy of her cookbook, The Spunky Coconut Cookbook (a $30 value). Read on to learn how to enter the drawing.

Kelly's cookbook contains 115 Gluten-Free, Casein-Free, and Sugar-Free recipes with 65 color photos. There are 100 vegetarian recipes and 30+ raw inspired recipes. She does use eggs in many of her baked treats though. But there are still plenty of egg-free recipes for those with sensitivities or who are vegan.

As the name of her book and blog suggest, many of her delicious recipes involve coconut; whether it is coconut milk, coconut oil, or shredded coconut. Here is a taste of a few of her recipes: Butternut Souffle, Chicken Meatballs, Creamy Pea Soup, Caesar Salad, Funa (fake tuna salad), Chocolate Chip Bars, Vanilla Toffee Cake, Pumpkin Ice Cream, Mango Lemon Sorbet, Banana Bread (grain-free), Quinoa Almond Muffins, Creamy Bean Dip, and much much more!!!

You can view a wide variety of sample recipes on Kelly's blog. This high protien, low sugar Vanilla White Bean Cake with Chocolate Frosting is my favorite!

Kelly began to study nutrition in Maryland when her girls were very young. Her daughter Ashley was a baby, and daughter Zoe was a toddler at that time. Both girls were not well. In order to help them, her naturopathic doctor worked with them to radically change their diet (by removing gluten, casein, and sugar). She and her husband soon realized that their own health problems could be resolved as well. It was very eye-opening to see how many kinds of issues could be treated. So, after years of research and experimentation, Kelly has created recipes so similar to the old ones that nobody feels deprived. Together, through diet and biomedical treatments, their family is overcoming celiac disease, gluten-intolerance, ADD, and autism with great success.

Cherry Pumpkin Seed Flour Muffins (sugar-free, grain-free)

We have been picking pounds of cherries from our lovely friend’s cherry tree. Every year they give us a call in July when their cherries are ready and a call in late August when their peaches are ready. Both of their trees abundantly produce the most amazing cherries and peaches. Even after picking boxes of fruit there is still more on the trees!

We pit and freeze (I use this cherry pitter) most of the cherries for our children. They all have a frozen fruit snack addiction. I normally don’t keep traditional snack foods in the house such as packaged crackers, cookies, and bars so when they are hungry they push a stool over to the freezer and help themselves to bowlfuls of frozen fruit. This is usually cherries, blueberries, raspberries, and peaches. I also freeze plums and pears in September but they don’t go for those!

I have been working on more recipes using super nutritious pumpkin seed flour. I must have had beginner’s luck with my Chocolate Pumpkin Seed Flour Cake because my other attempts have not been so successful. This flour is like none other that I have baked with. Pumpkin seed flour seems to suck up a lot of liquid! When testing recipes, I would keep adding more liquid to the batter because it seemed so thick. The end, baked result was soggy and never quite cooked all the way through.

With my previous attempts, I tested egg-free recipes. Since these weren’t so successful, I decided to use eggs again. After mixing this recipe up I thought to add more liquid because again, the batter was sooo thick! But I stopped and thought just to bake them as is, and see what happens. They came out perfect! Finally, a pumpkin seed flour recipe I can share with you.

If you would like to purchase this flour you can click here for ordering info.